Conversations With A Stone

Public Escalators in Medellín

2012-02-08T11:49:00.001-06:00

I found the following article an interesting, funny, and sort of thought-provoking piece. It's kind of self-explanatory, so no introduction needed. Surprisingly, although the word "escalator" has a Romantic root (to climb in Spanish is escalar), the word for escalator in Spanish is actually "electric stairs" or "mechanical stairs."

source: sospaisa.com; sign translates: "What pride! We live in the only

neighborhood in the world with public electric stairs [i.e. escalators]"

Medellín celebrates its new escalators, by Jenny Carolina González.

published in La Tercera, Feb 2, 2012.

Andrés Felipe and his friends spend their afternoons going up and down. Like an amusement park ride without an end, they enjoy themselves on a steep metal structure, yet it's far from being a game for children. At their young age, they haven't been able to understand that, actually, the public service escalators, the only like this in the world, are an advance in the wholistic development of one of the most troubled neighborhoods in Medellín, which is situated in the Northwest of Colombia.

Constucted in Barrio Independencia Uno in District 13, located on one of the hills of the city, the escalators were conceived as a solution to the mobility problem affecting twelve thousand citizens that daily had to descend 350 steps to connect with public transportation, commerce, health services, and neighboring areas.

With three "metro-cables" (cable-cars), which provide transport options to two districts and one adjacent area, the capital of the department of Antioquía, with 2.5 million residents, is a pioneer in providing access to the high-altitude parts of the city. In this case, geographic conditions did not allow for cable-cars, and so it wasn't possible to replicate that form of transportation.

The work, which cost $6 million US, and will be completed in March, spans 185 meters with six two-way escalators which will be covered and whose monthly maintanence of US $40,700 will be taken on by the mayoral office of the city.

"The climb up would exhaust us, because there were many flights and to up with purchases was not easy [...]" tells 20-year old Yaneth Pérez.

[...] "The escalators, more than a engineering project, is a social project; it is a conveyor belt for social processes within an enlightening urbanism that beginning with infrastructure generates culture, coexistence, employment, and social reinsertion," explains Margarita Angel, chief of EDU. The project will bring with it a courthouse, the recovery of public space, the construction of urban walkways, a major high school, parks, and playground equipment.

Nicanor Mania at UdeC

2012-02-07T16:59:00.002-06:00

Related to the previous post, the University of Concepción is getting in to the action, honoring regional poet Nicanor Parra, who is once again being promoted for a Nobel Prize. They have either allowed or commissioned graffiti artists to recreate some of his famous visual jokes on their walls, and hung a huge, sort of unreadable and yet striking banner on their clock tower with the text of one of his works.

Here's a selection of the art with ROUGH translations:

"You ask me that question? / But you ARE antipoetics!"

"No nuclear weapons / Let's stop at flyswatters"

"GREAT / And now who will free us from the freedom-fighters?"

"THE ORACLE'S RESPONSE / Whatever you do, you'll regret it!"

"SHUT UP ALREADY! 2,000 years of lying is enough!"

The Campaigns for Parra

2012-02-06T11:38:00.001-06:00

My favorite poet, a phrase which I concede sounds rather pretentious and ridiculous, recently died. Another poet whose wor I enjoy, Nicanor Parra, is creeping ever closer to his 100th birthday, but last year won the most important prize in Spanish-language literature, the Spanish government's Cervantes Prize. Both poets have a tendency to write about everyday things with irony, but not cynicism. The main difference is that Szymborska writes in a formally poetic and often "pretty" way, while Parra gleefully tossed aside poetic floweriness and cat himself as an "anti-poet". And I may add that both can be pretty damn funny. (One favorite line from Parra: I don't believe in the peaceful way / I don't believe in the violent way .. I don't even believe in the Milky Way).

Well, given that Nobels are not given posthumously, there's been a new uptick in campaigning in Parra's favor before time runs out. Even ex-president Michelle Bachelet has written a letter to the Swedish Academy in his favor. The following article, from a magazine with a hilarious-to-me name, Que Pasa?, explains the history of attempts to get the Swedish Academy's attention and get Parra the Nobel.

The Campaigns for Parra

by Antonio Díaz Oliva

Universities from the US to Chile to Europe. Politicians, academics, and devoted fans. There is a long history of agitation so that the anti-poet receives the Nobel Prize for Literature. This year, it seems, there will be one more try.

The first time was quite early: it was 1969 and in the United States a small group of students got organized. It was the first campaign to nominate Nicanor Parra for the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was, to say the least, an arduous task. Parra's oeuvre had been translated into English (by beatnik poets with whom the Chilean had a great affinity and friendship) and the antipoet was rather experienced - he was already 55 years old. Yet as a literary figure he had to struggle against other Chilean and Latin American intellectuals, as this was the epoch in which the Boom was at a rolling boil. "In effect, it was a low-level campaign," recalls Patricio Lerzundi, the journalist, poet, and academic who was then residing in the US and was pulling the strings of the campaign. "We made some efforts to get in contact with students at other American universities and well-known Latin Americans, but at this time the campaign for Pablo Neruda had already began. And that, of course, threw some water on our party." And the rest of the story is already known: a couple years later, in 1971, Neruda was boarding a plane to Stockholm to receive the Nobel.

Thus the extensive history of campaigns which have been launched to get Parra the Nobel prize has a premature beginning. Since 1969, there have been other attempts at, let's say, a smaller scale. But it seems they haven't made enough noise for the Swedish Academy to take note of the Chilean poet; there have been other factors that worked against him: mainly, Parra's low visibility outside of Chile. Or, better said, the sporadic nature of his publications in countries such as France, Germany, the US, and, of course, Sweden. "At least in the US, in the academic world, he and his work became rather well-known early in career. But we ought to recognize that in university classrooms very little poetry, and even less foreign.language poetry, is read," says the American academic and scholar of Parra's work, Marlene Gottlieb.

Gottlieb was in charge of organizing the campaign of 1995. And, perhaps along with the campaign of 2001, this was the most important one, although there was others in the 90's. At least, it generated a decent amount of noise. Beforehand, there was another in 1993, but it wasn't comparable to the campaign of 1995, led by the aforementioned academic, which had the Instituto Cervantes of New York as its official nominating institution. As well, there was the campaign of 2001, in which people like José Antonio Viera-Gallo were involved and which, until now, has been the campaign with the most media coverage. To all of these, we must add the current campaign which is being led by Chilean, American, and European universities and among others will include the celebrated Peruvian critic and Brown University professor Julio Ortega as one of its leaders.

This time, the college that started it all is Diego Portales University. As well, universities such as Pompeu Fabra (Spain) and Leiden (Holland) are taking part in crafting the document which will be sent to the Swedish Academy at the end of January. The National Council for Culture has also been helping.

The Nobel and its paradoxes

Julio Ortega isn't a new name in this. On the contrary, he has long followed Parra's work. It was in 1964, when the poet visited Lima, invited by the Peruvian writer José María Arguedas, that a 22-year old Ortega heard Parra give a reading and his left stupefied. He wrote an article for a newspaper, "Parra and Paradoxes" and Argudas himself wrote to congratulate him. Ortega recalls: "I realized that to converse with Parra's poetry was to be part of a group of practitioners of the most contemporary language: a language that invites us in as interlocutors." According the Peruvian professor, this is one of the keys to Parra: that many readers feel a kind of community around his work and figure.

Some years later, when he was a student at Yale, Ortega had a chance to meet in person the author of Artifacts [i.e., Parra]. And they spoke for hours, establishing a connection that is still alive. And not only that: in 1991, Julio Ortega was part of the jury for the first Juan Rulfo Prize, which was given to Parra in the Guadalajara Book Fair that year, when the antipoet gave his now-classic "Guadalajara Speech" that, not for nothing, contained towards the end a little comic poem titled "After the Rulfo, Time to Dream about the Nobel?" with the line, "If they didn't give it to Rulfo / Why will they give it to me?"

Together with Ortega, Marlene Gottlieb has been one of the other academics that have helped popularize Parra's work. She began to read the Chilean's poetry when she was a student at Columbia University, around 1966. And she was the author of the first thesis about the poet written in the United States. She notes about her participation in the campaign of 1995: "Basically, I called academics, and, as they knew well Parra's work and taught it in their classes, they totally agreed that it was time for him to receive the Nobel. Then I wrote the letter and they signed it". She brought together 300 intellectuals from around the world to sign the document. There were receptions and conferences in various cities and universities, but mostly in the United States, which give a somewhat international touch to the campaign.

A few years before, there was another attempt, the campaign of 1993 which had the University of Concepción as its official sponsor. At that time, José Antonio Viera-Gallo was a congressional representative for the city of Concepción and got in contact with the people in that university's Spanish department (a group who were mostly "Parrians"). "The problem in those years is that Parra hadn't published a "Complete Works" in Spanish, unlike now. And though he was known in some academic environments in the US, his work had not been fully translated into English, French and Swedish. And when it was translated, it was rather intermittent, when there should be a certain continuity in that." explains Viera-Gallo.

What he remembers most from this instance is that they began to see the first signals of support from Parra's fans. Graffiti and flyers appeared in the streets of Santiago, something that has been maintained until today - near Parra's house in La Reina and in other places as well, it's common to see references like The Nobel for Parra!. This campaign, happily, was coming from his staunchest fans. The people who read Parra, but not from the academy.

[... in 2001 there was another campaign...] "The people of the Academy are quite distrustful. They didn't approach us at all," remembers Viera-Gallo, who in 2001 was the senator from Concepción and also the most active politician in the campaign. "What they did recommend to us with this: to have the collected works translated into Swedish. And it also wouldn't be a bad idea to have Parra give a reading in Stockholm."

[...About the Nobel,] "Parra just laughs, he takes it seriously and also not so much," says the journalist Lerzundi. "The last time that I saw him, when I asked him if he was thinking about the Nobel, he answered no, but he was working on his "Stockholm Speech" just in case." Some even joke that the anti-poet should put out a book that collects just his poems and other writings about why they should give him, or why they haven't given him, the Nobel prize. "It's a distracted prize [??]. There have been great moments of sudden attention, but Parra is in good company: Borges, Kafka, Joyce, Rulfo" says Ortega. "The only constant about the Nobel is its capacity to surprise. The Swedes do that with great success."

Tsunami step-by-step

2012-01-28T06:44:00.000-06:00

The journalistic organization CIPER has just put out an exposé of the various errors that led to chaotic and contradictory information from the goverment in the hours after the earthquake of February 2010, which helped lead to many deaths in the ensuing tidal wave (some people even went back down from the hills after hearing that a tsunami was not coming, only to be surprised a short time later). It doesn't seem to be a huge national story, but certainly there's keen interest in the most effected areas. And a judicial investigation is ongoing, which recently made a bit of a splash by indicating that ex-president (and likely candidate for another term) Michelle Bachelet was going to be questioned in the matter. The following is just the beginning of a very long article.

Tsunami Step-by-Step: The Scandalous Errors and Omissions of SHOA and ONEMI

by Jorge Aliaga Sandoval and Pedro Ramirez, January 18th, 2012.

In Valparaíso, the officers of the Navy Oceanographic Service (SHOA) didn't reverse the cancellation of the tsunami warning, even though the the oceanographic on duty warned of "destructive waves". In Santiago, staff of the National Emergency Office (OMENI) learned of the wave that devastated Juan Fernandez and still didn't give warning. In the next two hours, enormous waves killed 36 people. These are only two of the dozen gave errors committed by civilian and military authorities that had to be masked for security reasons on the morning of February 27, 2010 and which this investigation from CIPER (Center of Investigative Reporting) unveils for the first time.

3:34, zero hour

The soft rocking put him on alert. He woke up as the earthquake was just beginning and instead of becoming frightened, he sharpened his senses. When the bedroom began to shake furiously, his wife jumped out of bed to safeguard the children. He didn't lose his cool or seek refuge. Unlike the almost 12 million Chileans throughout the six most populated regions of the country that woke up terrified, Jore Henríquez Cárcamo got up and against his survival instinct, he tried to measure the force unleashed by the earth.

That morning, the 27th of February 2010, Henríquez was the chief of the National Emergency Office (ONEMI) of the Biobio region. In technical terms, he was what´s called a "trained observer." In the darkness he gauged the creaking and crunching of the surrounding buildings, the bucking of the furniture, and the crash of things that shattered on the floor. But the clearest sign that the quake would become a tragedy, he could barely keep himself standing. He calculated the intensity on the Mercalli scale and immediately thought about the chance of a tsunami, as he was only three kilometers from the shore in San Pedro de la Paz. Henríquez picked up his phone while the earth continued to release lashes of energy and dialed the number of the ONEMI central office in Santiago. He knew that communications would collapse as soon as the ground quieted down.

One of the three staff members on duty at the High Alert Center (CAT) answered his call. It might have been the night manager, the radio operator or the driver. On the fly, Henriquez reported that the quake was intensity IX or X on the Mercalli scale. On the other side of the phone, they indicated that current information pointed only to a degree VII. Henríquez got angry:

- Look, you son of a bitch, this is an earthquake and it's IX or X.

Henriquez had never talked about this with his ONEMI colleagues, until during a reunion dinner, in April 2011. When Carmen Fernandez, the ex-director of ONEMI who resigned after the earthquake heard Henriquez's story.

-I felt my legs buckle when I heard it- Fernandez later told CIPER.

Henriquez's story leaves evident which in the early morning of the earthquake, one of the three staff members on duty at CAT dismissed a key piece of information to evaluate the early possibility of a tidal wave. That morning's log, officially put out by the CAT office, erroneously indicates that in the Biobio region the earthquake was only a Mercalli VIII.

Failed anti-smoking law = more years of coughing for me

2012-01-26T08:46:00.001-06:00

It was only a year or two that Chicago had a strict anti-smoking ordinance before I moved to Chile. And yet, I had quickly grown acustomed to eating and drinking and watching bands in clean atmospheres.

In Chile, it's different. For one thing, everyone smokes, and I mean everyone. I think I've met about 5 people in 3 years that don't smoke. From sweet, goody-goody girls in my class to vaguely menacing 14-year olds wearing expensive Pumas and NY Yankees hats, to fruit vendors wearing wide-brimmed straw-hats and hawking cantalopes on a horse cart, they're all equal at the moment of asking "got a light?"

In that regard, it's sort of shocking that, for a brief time, it seemed smoking was about to be banned in restaurants and bars. Already there are two anti-smoking regulations: one, all cigarettes have graphic photos of the effects of smoking - I believed, for like a year, that one brand was called "infarto" until I learned that it meant "heart attack". Two, all restaurants must have a non-smoking section, usually a few chairs behind a useless frosted half-wall.

Well, the hope of change was great while it lasted.

Deputies Take Out the Article that Would Have Banned Smoking in Restaurants and Bars

The Anti-Tabacco Law, dealt with last week in the Lower House, has generated a series of reactions both within the Congress and in civic organizations. The discussion has centered on the removal of the article which sought to garantee "spaces 100% free of smoke" in enclosed public places, such as bars, casinos, restaurants, and discotheques. Specifically, this phrase was rejected by 47 representatives of various stripes, while it received only 42 votes in favor as well as 11 abstentions.

The current law only establishes the separation of smokers' and non-smokers' setions in these types of places. The rejected initiatives was much more restrictive. Among parliamentarians and civil society groups, there were two stances on the polemical article. For some, it is important not to infringe the liberty of smokers in enclosed public places, while others point the emphasis on the right of the state to safeguard the health of Chileans, especially the workers in smoke-filled places.

The conservative representative Karla Rubliar stated in a letter to La Segunda that the spirit of the bill is not being fulfilled, since people are currently permitted to smoke in enclosed public spaces. "Chile is leaving incomplete international agreements which it has committed to. And the gravest thing is that its permissiveness is damaging the health of the population. On the contrary, her counterpart on the far right, Felipe Salaberry, showed his contentment with the voting results: "without damaging the liberty of people to avoid smoke, public leisure places, like restaurants and bars, should have a smoking section, as the law established years ago."

The president of the Chilean Respiratory Illnesses Society, Carolina Herrera, has a completely differing view. As she explained in a letter sent to La Tercera, the removal of the article is "inexplicable" and will mean a step backward, since for the first time a consensus had been acheived among the various postures. "The excision of this article is a threat to the entire law currently under modification, because it violates the right to health of workers in pubs and restaurants, on exposing them involuntarily to smoky environments."

The organization Tabacco-Free Chile, directed by Sonia Cobarruvias, also criticized the measure. As well, the president of the College of Physicians, Enrique Paris, who showed and discontent and called for considering the employees who are affected by cigarette smoke. "We should think of the health of users [i.e. smokers] as well as workers exposed to smoke in these businesses. We could have the case of a pregnant woman who is a waitress and working in a business where smoking is allowed. Who will play the workers for the medical treatments they might need?"

CIPER Chile, unsigned blog, Jan. 25, 2012

Students expelled for occupations

2012-01-23T19:23:00.000-06:00

The student movement in Chile is taking something of a summer break. Although who knows what's to come: in recent student federation elections, even more radical candidates than the previous year's were chosen in various universities, including the emblematic University of Chile.

But often it's forgotten here that the movement began with high school, not university, students. And there leaders are being systematically expelled from school. I have translated about the first half of a long investigation in the matter by CIPER, the only news source in the country that seems to do serious investigative reporting. And although the details may seen somewhat eye-glazing and local, the stories of the student's lives are quite interesting, I think.

More recent news is that some of the expulsions have been ruled illegal, as political persecution or simple misuse of power (ie, the police should investigate crimes, not a school system). But the majority of expulsions were done under the table and are otherwise unaffected by the ruling.

In the High Schools of Ñuñoa and Providencia, Massive Expulsions of Student Leaders

by Catalina Albert, Juan Andrés Guzmán y Rossana Farfán, published Jan. 13, 2012

In the municipality of Providencia, there are 62 students unenrolled or expelled. In Ñuñoa, 109. No organization or agency has yet carried out a complete national count of the massive punishment of the students who took over their schools, and the government remains committed to a more organized punishment in the future: an Anti-Occupation Law, which would allow student leaders that call for marches to be taken prisoner. Getting ahead of this law, the mayors Sabat (of Ñuñoa) and Labbé (of Providencia) have already expelled or left unenrolled 24 spokesmen from schools taken over in 2011. With this drastic method, the authorities are looking for a 2012 without such social unrest.

"The comments of Mayor Sabat were slanderous. What he said was quite far from the reality within the high school. There was discipline, calm, happiness." says Silvio Rivera, one of the young men who remained in the National Girls' Boarding School during the take-over which lasted from June to January. That was Silvio's response to the denigrating comments made last Wednesday by mayor Pedro Sabat, who said that the takeover of the boarding school had turned into a "whorehouse." He accused that the men had been allowed to enter, that many girls were living with male students [from other schools], and the cost of repairing the school would be $200 million pesos ($400,000 US) due especially to the destruction of the computers.

"I am a sad, poor mayor that has made a gigantic effort so that my schools be the best places possible," said Sabat in the emotional roller-coaster day that followed his initial statement. He also said the authorities had been completely disrespected, using a colorful phrase.

Silvio Rivera is one of the young men who were on site during the take over. He is the brother of a student, Colomba Rivera, who was in her first year at the said school. He assures that "no one was looking for a slut at the school. If we were there, it was so that nothing would happen to the girls, because the school is located near the neighborhood Rosita Renard, which is a dangerous place. Silvio remained with his sister until November, and says that "the people who were there were committed to the student movement."

The National Girls' Boarding School has 559 students. Colomba Rivera explains that in June, 70 percent of them supported the take-over to join the national student movement for quality education. "This was not a whorehouse; we had convictions. The males that entered came to protect us. But even so, criminals broke in and robbed us anyway." That is she believes the 40 computers disappears, a robbery of which Sabat accuses the students.

While the public discussion has focused on the sexual and criminal accusations, the municipal education system has left unenrolled 109 young people in Ñuñoa and 62 in Providencia, according to a count by CIPER [the journalistic organization that published this article]. The families of these young people have had to deal with these expulsions themselves, since the Ministry of Education hasn't even counted how many students are in this situation, looking for a new school after being punished for the mobilizations of 2011.

The comments of Sabat, as well as other authorities like the mayor of Providencia, may make it seem to these families that the mobilizations were just a disturbing party, with sex and violence, without any useful objective or noble cause.

After mayor Sabat's declarations, his daughter, the deputy Marcela Sabat, said that her father was "not temperamentally in the best of places". In the following hours, Sabat apologized for losing his cool, but did not retract his accusations. In fact, he called the occupying students "little fools."

Having a clear picture about what occurred is important not only for the public record, but also because these days Congress is discussing the so-called "Anti-Occupation Law," urged by the Ministry of the Interior. The Law is also known as the Hinzpeter Law, named for the Interior Minister who has been a target of relentless student criticism. The act seeks to sanction "invading, occupying, or looting educational establishments" and could gain public sympathy if the collective memory of 2011 coincides with mayor Sabat's: degenerate behavior, robbery, and violence.

Amnesty International has been very critical of the proposed law, saying that it would take away fundamental rights. For Ana Piquer, executive direction of Amnesty International, the most troubling aspect is the word "disorder," which is vague enough to allow action against students for various reasons. "The lack of clarity in the concept "disorderly conduct" could bring along fundamental threats to the rights of assembly and protest," signaled the lawyer.

Getting Rid of the Leaders

One of the articles of the proposed law allows the authorities to punish with jail time leaders who convoke marches which end up in violent clashes. The bill proposes "to establish clearly the criminal responsibility of those who participate, of who have incited, promoted, or fomented disorders or other acts of force or violence that implicates certain grave acts such as paralyzing or interrupting a public service..."

The constitutional lawyer Patricio Zapata has said about this rule: "Don't be confused. The idea, in this case, is not to punish the encapuchados [hooded, violent protesters]. Note that it also doesn't seek to punish those that incite violence. The goal is rather to punish those who convoke a social mobilization that ends in disorder. It's not necessary to have wanted this result, it's enough to have foreseen it as possible." The article reminds this lawyer of a proposal by Pinochet in 1983 to "criminalize organizers of protest marches."

But before this bill has been approved, the municipalities of Ñuñoa and Providenca are already sanctioning leaders of the takeovers with what they have at hand: expulsions and cancelations of enrollments. CIPER's count indicates that in Ñuñoa and Providencia, 24 student spokesmen have been left out of the public school system. The majority of these young people don't belong to any political group; their leadership was formed spontaneously during discussions between students. Their expulsion represents a heavy blow to the organization of high school students, and makes one think that in next March [beginning of 2012 school year], few students would be willing to lead protest movements, as they would be risking expulsion and even jail if the Hinzpeter Law is approved.

Various educational establishments have put into force a new measure: they demand that students, on enrolling, sign a commitment that in 2012 they will not mobilize. This is the case at Liceo Tajamar, a girls' school in Providencia. The administration delivered to its 1,165 students - to sign "voluntarily" - a promise not to participate in protests or takeovers the following year. The same thing happened at Liceo Alessandri, the only difference being that the students' parents or guardians signed the document of "apoliticism." In Ñuñoa, according to students at Liceo José Toribio Media, the 1,127 students had to sign obligatorily a promise not to get bad grades, misbehave, or participate in mobilizations.

It's possible that the schools are just getting rid of students that provoked destruction and theft, as the mayors allege. The important thing is that in the review done by CIPER of the expulsions in Ñuñoa and Providencia, no records were found regarding these accusations. Although in some cases, the schools followed certain existing norms for expulsion, in most cases the students simply found that they had lost their place for next year, without possibility of appeal. This happened in Liceo Tajamar, where students were notified on the final day of registration, vitiating any recourse as stipulated in the student manual, such as an appeal to a committee of teachers.

I Don't Regret It
Scarlett Bravo is one of the student spokesmen expelled in Providencia, and like many of the students that exercised leadership in 2011, she is an outstanding student. She is 17 years old and was a junior in Liceo Carmela Carvajal de Prat, a nationally recognized girls' school.

Scarlett was living in Angol, and in 2009, when she was selected for this high school, she came to live in Santiago along with her mother and brother, while her father remained in the south working. There are plenty of high schools in the 550 kilometers that separated Scarlett's families, but - and this is the motivation for the student complaints of 2011 - practically none of them are like the Liceo Carmela, which offers its students an almost secure path to university. One indicator is that the school obtained 42nd place among the almost 3,000 schools that took the PSU standardized university entrance test.

"For us, it was difficult to decide to separate, but we knew it was the high school where my daughter had to study" says Scarlett's father.

It was Liceo Carmela's attraction of distant students which mayor Cristian Labbé referred to when, confronting the student takeovers, he announced first the closure and then the massive expulsion of protesters. "85 percent of the students in Providencia are from outside the city and receive an education from which 99 percent enter university, and yet they bite the hand that feeds them. No more! We're going to focus on students from Providencia," said Labbé.

Labbé thinks that the students that arrive there should be grateful for the education that the municipality offers them. And Scarlett felt grateful, but just didn't stop thinking about those who didn't have the same luck. Now she is one of 10 students not enrolled in the school. They expelled her for having participated in the occupation of the ex-Congress building, when the then-Minister of Education was trapped. Scarlett admits that in this action she broke a pane of glass.

"It was rather stupid. Everyone was banging the other windows to make noise, and I joined and it so happened the window next to me was crystal. I knocked it and it broke. It was an accident," she says sheepishly. As for the months of occupation in Liceo Carmela, she reflects: "I don't regret anything, I feel more proud than disappointed. We managed to wake up the girls within the school and that will stay with me: that they don't just feel good getting good grades in math, but that they want to be more socially conscious women."

Heartwarming: Boy finds a new Dad!

2012-01-20T08:16:00.001-06:00

Recently, I read the following heartwarming story. Enjoy.

The History of the First Single Man to Adopt a Child in Chile

Pablo Estrada (40) didn't have planned to be a father, but then he met Andrés (6). Although adoption law favors married couples, he struggled for a year and a half, until becoming his dad. He is the first that has achieved this.

Pablo doesn't remember details. He doesn't remember the topic of the conversation. In fact, he doubts that they talked about anything.at all. He doesn't even remember the exact date. In general terms, he can say that one afternoon in 2008, he arrived at the "Angels" Language School, in the borough of Providencia, because Ena, his girlfriend and a teacher there, had asked him to meet a child. To see how the child had transformed from an unbearable rouge into a child she had become hooked to. More from her insistence than from his own interest, Pablo was waiting in the yard to see who was this rascal Ena constantly talked about. When she called Andrés over, Pablo saw a chubby three-year-old, with a cleaned shaved head that rashly leaped through the nearby window and hugged him without even saying hello.

The hug he remembers well. It was warm, very tight. "It moved me. It was skin-tight." says Pablo, word-by-word. A few minutes later, he got back in his pickup and drove back to work, still disturbed. History shows that almost three years after that said, the so-called chubby boy became his legal son. Despite fatherhood not being in his plans, he struggled for this boy and became the first single man to adopt a child in Chile.

Pablo (40, architect) is not the first single man in Chile to try to adopt a child. But he is the first he has achieved it. Last year, 1,100 people attended the informational talks which are the first step in the adoption process. Just 8 were single men. Single women were a bit more common. In fact, nine of them managed to adopt in 2009, 2.1% of the country's total. In 2010 they only achieved six, and last year twelve. "They made me do exams with psychologists and social workers two times each, to complete my report. I assume that that's outside the norm and, perhaps, as I am single, they wanted to prove that I was really interested in adopting Andrés," tells Pablo. In fact, they incessantly harped on if he sure that he alone would take this great responsibility.

Days after his first visit with Andrés, he agreed with Ena to come visit the boy twice a week. Every Wednesday and Friday, Pablo and Andrés would play in the yard of the group home where he lived. Because of work commitments, Ena only come on Fridays. After a year, the pair asked for authorization to leave the home with him during their visits. The first time, they went to the zoo on Cerro Cristóbal in Santiago. It was a wonderful afternoon, but the trip back complicated matters. "He was crying, head-butting the wall. The kids there do that often. It was painful to leave him like that."

In his first three years, Andrés had more hardships than his share. He was a premature baby, his mother abused drugs and alcohol while pregnant, and he was born weighing barely a kilo and a half. He had a kidney operation as an infant. He was often hospitalized for various respiratory ailments. And there were consequences. He had retardation in his psychomotor development. It was difficult to learn to talk and walk. But none of that changed Pablo's opinion.

Andrés' birthday is January 21. A bit before this day in 2010, Pablo and Ena had a brief conversation that can be summed up in a phrase: the moment arrived. "When I became to visit him, I didn't have a concrete idea in my head, but I knew that I was going somewhere. I didn't see myself leaving him there and us continuing our lives. It would have been tremendously damaging for him. And for us," says Pablo.

Pablo and Ena decided to begin the process as a couple, but in a short time, Ena dropped out. The illness of only only brother forced for to center her energies on her family and the couple distanced themselves. The plan to adopt Andrés seemed to be falling through the cracks.

The Waiting Room

Pablo had to decide. If he stalled too long, Andrés would be taken to a new group home, since he would no longer be the right age for his then-residence. It seemed they were losing the way and all the work they'd already completed. "I tried to convince Ena to stay involved, but I came to a point where I simply had to continue solo. So I did.

"I didn't feel a disadvantage compared to the married couples were wanted to adopt. I thought it would be like that, but actually I had some advantages. Andrés and I had a affinity that he wouldn't have with anybody else. In the first year he was calling my Papa. If they let him call me Papa at the residence, I didn't think they would introduce him to other families. In their way, they were letting me know that Andrés was mine... and later some of the "aunts" [group home attendants] told me that was the case," explains Pablo.

It would not be easy. The biological mother appeared on the scene. A short time after Pablo began the process, the child's mother was called for an internal revision. "If she accepted, it could have thrown out the entire process. Fortunately, she didn't want to be involved. It was a big scare," he tells. However, she didn't want to see him. So when Andrés was declared available for adoption, Pablo felt relief.

The relationship that Pablo and Andrés established left in the dust the preferences of adoption law. Rolando Melo, national director of the Child Protection Service, makes it clear: the priority falls first to domestic couples, then couples from abroad, and finally to divorced or single people. But Pablo did it all backwards; first he met Andrés, then he decided to adopt him, and then he began the process. He was his dad two years before the judge of the First Family Court signed her decision.

New Family
Andrés's toys are perfectly piled up on a shelf with four cubbyholes. On the highest part are the stuffed animals, including two Barneys. Next to them, the cars: Rayo McQueen, a Formula One, a firetruck, and a bunch more. Below, there is a complete zoo of rubber animals. Next to them, superheroes. "As he's a bit naughty, when I began to bring him from the group home, he would bring a toy each time. I would ask him to return it, but he'd say 'Later.' He intuited that this would become his permanent room. Now it's full of toys."

Ina hallway of the house there is a clock that doesn't give the time, but has instead a photo of Pablo and Andrés. In the living room, there are three photos. Andrés appears in all three. In one image, he is hugging Pablo, in another his is next to a character of the Backyardigans, Tyrone. In the final photo, he appears with Pablo's parents.

Andrés is spending these summer days in Villarica, in the house of his grandparents. He was the first to arrive in the family, but he's the oldest grandchild. Next are two girls. Pablo says that he gets along fine with his cousins, and that Andrés follows his grandpa wherever he goes. Pablo's parents have played a key role. And, he says, he remembers something they said to him. "They did not expect my decision, but they said that they were proud. They are happy."

His parents came to Santiago last October 4, to accompany him to the adoption proceedings. Pablo had butterflies in his stomach, even though for a whole year Andrés had been coming to his house on weekends. He had felt like a dad for some time. "I thought that if they didn't give me him, I'd keep trying. Sooner or later, he would turn 18 and come to be with me."

Nothing turned out wrong that day. Andrés did his part, he entered the courtroom crawling, making everyone laugh. For him, it was a process. He was asked if he really wanted to live with Pablo. "He was alone with the judge. But it wasn't more than two minutes." After that, the First Family Court gave legal life to the new family. "We were so close. It was an impossibility that someone would get the idea to separate us."

That day, they had a barbecue in the house. Something simple, as it was a workday. Yet emotional. They were his brothers, parents, some friends, and also Ena.

Last names
"I asked Ena if she wanted to be the mom and she responded yes," Pablo tells. They are trying to restart their relationship, and she is becoming ever more involved in the task of raising Andrés. In the coming weeks, Andrés will take on two last names: one of hers, and one of his: Estrada Méndez [normal is Spanish speaking countries] While this happens, Pablo and Andrés will continue their routine. In March, he will begin first grade in a school in La Florida with a focus on social integration. Even on vacation, Andrés wakes up around 8 in the morning. Andrés goes to Pablo's room and asks to see cartoons. Pablo asked him to say "Good Morning" first, and then turns on the TV:

When they ask Andrés about his dad, they say he works and watches TV. Nothing else. Pablo has tried to make him a fan of the U [soccer team]. Besides a stuffed lion, he has a giant flag in his room and has taken Andrés to the stadium. But Andrés gets bored. There are also parts of his life that he hasn't forgotten. Like his friends. When Pablo's high school friends gave Andrés a welcome with plenty of presents, Andrés didn't go crazy about the presents. He was just happy to have friends again.

Pablo would like to have more kids. In fact, he always wanted many kids, but fatherhood came to him in a way he never thought. "Andrés and I simply met each other. And now he's my son. I just happened to meet him in an unexpected way."

La Tercera, Jan. 14, by Paulina Sepúlveda / José Miguel Jaque, in Spanish here.

Antiauthoritarian Gringos

2012-01-18T20:04:00.001-06:00

The following is a book review from Saturday's La Tercera... the title made us laugh, but the book sounds only somewhat interesting.

Contestatarios Gringos [Anti-authoritarian Gringos]

Matías Kunstmann’s debut book takes place in New York, almost completely within the campus of Columbia University, although occasionally the main characters leave the confines of the university to walk around the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights (not “Hights” as Kunstmann writes) Happily, it doesn’t deeply deal with academic matters, although the author as well as the narrator shows quite an interest in quantum physics. Lo improbable de mí [“The Funny Thing About Me”... or something, literal translations of titles don’t always make sense] follows a simple line of growing suspense, interrupted in the end by the main character’s putting in practice his concept of “abandonment”.

In the weeks before the Bush-led invasion of Iraq, several ridiculous, generally non-violent actions took place - typically using red paint. The acts indirectly involve Cristóbal Fernández, a Chilean physicist who is carrying out an investigation about black holes.

Fernández is both the narrator and main character of the story. And as the plot gains speed, the young man aquires a more and more nihilistic perspective. In part, this is because of certain confusing situations that touch him; in part, this is due to certain physical concepts which Kunstmann shares with the reader through brief appendices interspersed in the main text. Fernández’s foil is a American girl that evantually becomes his girlfriend, Kate, who, besides studying at Columbia Law School, is a militant activist in the movement behind the actions - the organization calls itself “Radical Thinkers in Action” and as for its ideology it has much in common with the current protestors of Wall Street.

At the book’s opening, during a forum about the pros and cons of invading Iraq, Cristóbal bumps into Kate in the midst of some unexpected confusion; minutes before, someone had emptied a can of red paint onto the head of a speaker in favor of the war, and after an unexpected power cut, someone else had written “No to the circus of power!” on the wall in red spray paint. The young woman, who Fernández just caught a glimpse of, has fingers stained with red paint.

Kunstmann gets across a clear picture of how young American protest groups organize, function, and express themselves. Such an accurate shapshot of a distinct socio-cultural phenomenon is the strongest achievement of the novel. It’s what gives importance and grace to the rest of the piece, which, at times, is sustained by caricatures, like Pepe, the Peruvian student who is Cristóbal’s roommate, or Siri, the obese girl that lives with Kate.

Towards the end of the book, Fernández, already planning to flee, summarizes with eloquence the abandonment and disenchantment that burden him. And what could have just been a little novel of lifelike adventures takes a decidedly transcendental turn:

There is nothing out there, nothing except the little garden of one’s own existence, this singular dimension of experiences ordered by the omniscient narrators that we all are. Everything else is a game, a simple abstraction. As much as Kate insists on trying to change things this morning, it’s impossible to escape perceptible reality, the only reality; nobody waits for anyone on any bridge. Not her, not me either.

Hunting Onas, the Graphic Novel

2012-01-15T21:03:00.000-06:00

One somewhat uncomfortable aspect of shopping for Chilean souvenirs is the presence of "stuffed animals" of extinct or decimated indigenous people from the far South. A year or two ago, a documentary came out about a particularly unpleasant episode, the capture of some indigenous people for exhibition in zoos. Now a graphic novel is coming out on the same theme. Article from La Tercera:

Graphic Novel Revives the History of Onas in Human Zoos

Abducted (Raptados) tells the story of the hunt for indigenous in Europe in the 19th century.

The book will be launched next Saturday, in the Museum of Remembrance

To widen the holdings of the Hamburg Zoo, the animal-tamer and businessman Carl Hagenbeck one day began to pay for human beings of unknown, exotic races. His goal was exhibiting them in their natural environment. And so was written the fate of the indigenous Chilean who were hunted, literally, from 1881-1889, to be taken like animals to Europe.

Alvaro “Huevo” [egg ! ] Díaz (43) first learned about this story while he lived in Germany and decided that it was a real story worth telling, especially since it is a story which is rarely or ever told in official histories.

“I wanted to write a script. I always thought that we could make a movie with this, but more long-term; so I focused on the graphic novel because I have more experience,” says the writer, a nearly mythic collaborator on Trauko. In fact, while participating in a tribute to the discontinued comics magazine he met the illustrator Omar Campos (40), who became his parter for Abducted, which was born after two years of works and support from the Book Fund.

In their investigations, the pair found out that group of kawéskar (alaculufes), mapuches, and salknam (onas) had ended up in zoos in Europe. Díaz took some stories about the first group, and especially the latter group after becoming familiar with the studies of the French-American anthropologist Anne Chapman and the German priest Martín Gusinde. “The history of the Selknam was more exotic. Thinking of the graphic novel, there was more movement. Besides, its the indigenous culture that is perhaps the most well-known abroad, because of their body paint. That could make the book more successful and transcend boundaries,” Díaz explains.

Abducted, the first Chilean graphic novel released this year, is based on true facts and centers on an aboriginal couple that is taken with their fellow clan members to the Old Continent. The woman ends up in a zoo in Germany, and her husband in a zoo in Paris, where he is forced to adopt Western customs. Following the original idea, the story is cinematographic in spirit, but with an experimental aesthetic. Oniri, the illustrator, worked for a time in 3D animation, “and when I began drawing again, I realized that I wanted to make new things, so I began to use different materials to create textured backgrounds. I have a very thick photo-stock paper, and when I apply color, I apply textures which can be mold on a wall, wrinkled paper, wood, etc.”

At 140 pages, Abducted is a cocktail of drama, action, suspense, and romance, with the mentioned touch of organic colors, and some “winks” like the suspiciously named singer Serge Gainsbourg in a Parisian bordello. Beyond the visual and creative licences, the key thing is recovering a lost episode in the history of Chilean [violations of] human ]rights. “There are writings from the governor of Magallanes from the time period, and they always describe the onas just terribly, as though they were wild animals. And they believed that they were monster, almost, because they were completely greased and painted, because of the cold,” says the writer.

Abducted will be launched January 20, in the Museum of Memory.

January 14, 2012, La Tercera, by Rafael Valle, in Spanish

From the Nude Beach

2012-01-14T10:38:00.000-06:00

I have personal knowledge that "Moon Beach" is NOT the only nude beach in Chile - having stumbled upon a secluded area near Concepción where people tend to sunbathe in the buff and have even spray painted a warning on a nearby rock. However, Moon Beach in certainly the largest and most well-known example in the country, located just beside the "hippie village" of Horcón near Viña del Mar. Following is an interview with its founder and administrator.

René Rojas: Lifeguard and Administrator of Chile's Nude Beach

René Rojas is something of a hybrid between an ideologue and a crazy professor of walking around naked in Chile. 11 years ago he founded "Moon Beach," the only recognized nude beach in the country and recently the captaincy of the port of Punacaví awarded him rights to administer this swimming area 2 kilometers north of Horcón. As well, this season, René is the lifeguard at the beach. If this wasn't enough, he also organizes bus trips to these sands, the only ones in Chile where one can see people stark naked.

Since childhood, René has likes the sea. But always with clothes. Until one day he went to Brazil, and everything changed.

One day, taking photos, I happened upon a nude beach. I was in Florianopolis, on Gaheta Beach, and looking for a place to take pictures. The people that were organizing it all accepted my proposal, told me to disrobe, pass the day with them, and then take the pictures at the end of the afternoon. At first, I didn't do it. I had never done it, I felt some reserve, and it seemed a bit strange. But I went the next day. And when I got to the beach, I took off my clothes and went into the sea. It felt great. I didn't feel any of the modesty, nor shame, nor nothing of before; I felt relaxed, I liked the sensation, and immediately I turned the question around: "What doesn't this exist in Chile?"

The business had set off: René found out that yes, there had been a nude beach in Chile called Caucau, but in practice it was quite exclusive, no more than 10 people.

I did everything to contact them, I arrived and this group was practicing a clandestine activity, all illegal and repressed. At that time, besides being nudist, there was another constant always hanging in the air, the worry that the cops would come. Many were detained when the cops came down in plain-clothes. It was quite tense. But I had seen something else [in Brazil]. I had seen a beach with an organization, where the people shared, enjoyed themselves, nobody was uncomfortable with anyone else. And I began to search for a way to make it happen in Chile; it became my life´s project to create a place for nudists in Chile, and it had to be a beach.

When did you decide this?

In Brazil, 15 years ago. And the only person I had to tell was my father, who has always helped me my whole life. To show him what I wanted to do, I invited him to Brazil, to the nude beach. He was the first person to call me crazy. After him, everyone said the same thing. "You´re crazy, you can't do it, you're going against the grain, you've get yourself in trouble, we're in Chile." This made me want to do it more. I went to Brazil several times, I toured all the "naturist" areas in the South of Brazil.

And before you took off your clothes in Brazil, what did you think of that, of removing clothes in public?

Nothing; it didn't even exist in Chile, it's like asking someone "What do you think of wearing medieval armor?" I have no idea. It didn't exist in my vocabulary, in my social conditioning... I was absolutely ignorant in that area. However, when I got to know it, I was surprised how much I liked it, that it would express itself throughout my life. Brazilian naturism taught me what steps to follow; how they organized themselves, in order to organize here. I wouldn't take anything from Europe, it's totally different.

In Spain, for example, women can go topless on the beach.

Of course, it's that there's no law that says how to dress; as simple as that.

And here, there is.

Here, yes. Here it says you can't go without clothes, it's an infraction.

But here in the beach, no.

Mhh, no, no. There's no law in favor, but none against. Here the nudism is not sanctioned by law or permit, people just do it. People come here and take off their clothes. And everyone agrees.

There is the image that nudism is something sexual.

Yes, of course, but if you inform yourself a bit, you realize that these opinions are based on ignorance, nothing more. Research on the Internet for half an hour and you'll understand. And whoever doesn't get it, it's his problem.

What is naturalism for you?

It's the accepting of your natural state, which is nude, without any other connotation. It's an activity based on respect, on common sense ["shared sensibility"]. It's healthy, fun, natural. It has nothing to do with sexuality.

[...]

The other prejudice is that "I can't go to a nude beach, because I'd be walking around with an erection all day." What do you think of this?

People who don't know about nudism may think this. If they get to know it, they'll realize that it doesn't exist, it's a myth that only passes through the mind of someone who flatters himself as "super-macho." No one can walk around all day with an erection on the beach. It's ridiculous, a joke. It's not real. And if at some moment a person ends up with an erection by accident, nobody is stupid enough to stroll around. They conceal it; they lay face down on their towels and it passes.

[...]

But as a lifeguard, you have to wear clothes, right?

Yes, we have to wear clothes.

Does that bum you out?

Totally, yes. Imagine, I live nudism, I love being naked on the beach, so for me it's a sacrifice. I know that for the moment, for the expense, the lifeguard must be me. But if things go well, you can be sure that next year the life guard won't be me, hahaha.

The Clinic, Jan 10, 2012. Spanish here.

"Educational Determinism"

2012-01-13T07:18:00.000-06:00

In the last month, students around Chile have taken and received their results on the PSU, the exam that determines if, where, and what they study in university. The PSU is largely modelled on the SAT, with a section on math and a section on language. Two additional sections, analogous to the SAT-II, measure science and history, and are optional. The importance of these tests can't be overstated; each "career" (major; see last post) in each university has cut-off marks for studying, and if you score a high mark most universities will lower your tuition, or the government will even give you free eduaction if you plan to study to be a teacher.

The supposed inustice of the PSU, which shuttles students from wealthy homes and well-funded schools into the two elite universities in the country and thus reproduces inequality, was one of several focal point of the nearly year-long protest movement this year.

Educational Determinism: in 10th grade, the PSU is already taken

A repeated argument about inequality in school achievement says that is come from the cradle, that economic inequality penetrates the very cells of our children. An opposing argument claims that these deifferences of "birth" can be resolved through effort, study, and talent; that is, through a "meritocracy" During the PSU season, the latter argument multiplies and runs through homes and plazas of the country. However, the data show us a different reality. Inequality in educational results in a product of the Chilean educational process. As we reach the end of the school year [note: article from one or two weeks before the PSU was taken], the cards have already been dealt and the chance of changing your own story is quite small. And this story doesn't have to do with effort or talent, but with social conditions that will be expressed in test results.

At 8 or 9 years, pupils in primary schools across Chile get the same score on the SIMCE test, no matter their income or origin. Imagine, everyone in fourth grade, getting the same score: poor, rich, Mapuche, blond, Errázurz or Catrileo. Differences in background have not impacted educational outcomes differentially. One can notice that the results are not good - in fact, they are mediocre - but they have not yet formed the educational inequality that so charaterizes Chile. In 4th grade, their is equality. In 10th grade, however, the gap has been formed obeying the laws of Chilean inequality, considered among the highest in the world. Poor students' marks lower from their already mediocre level, rich students' marks jump to very high levels, and the middle class students continue in their mediocrity.

Our school system is an active producer of the difference. The worst thing is that this difference, constructed between age 8 and age 16, will continue to mark school outcomes. The SIMCE score is a surprsingly good predictor of PSU scores; their curves on a graph are almost indistinguishable. Before finishing primary school [i,e. 8th grade], the PSU has already been taken. Every student can fight to be the exception, to flee from their destiny. Perhap La Tercera or El Murcurio will highlight the surprising case of the children of a nana, breadwinner, whose children could enter an elite university thanks to selling empanadas on Sunday and their Christian values. The message will be the same as the slogan at this year's national business conference: "It can be done, it depends on us." The same phrase that one speaker included on a flag, signed by poor children from Puente Alto, as a message to the business people of Chile. And of course, it can be done, in the case of the ideal citizen, the poor student that breaks the barriers, traumas, and hardships of life and demonstrates to the whole world that he can rise from the depths without revolution, without structural changes, only accepting the pain of the real.

We are in the middle of PSU season, and each year, many young people critize it and rebel against it. But the determinism happened long before, in an invisible way without clear and immediate consequences. It had finished before they left 8th grade, and everything else is a footnote.

Alberto Mayol, The Clinic, December 15, 2011, in Spanish: print edition only

Long article on Chilean education

2012-01-11T21:03:00.004-06:00

The Chilean student movement was for months the central feature, besides work, the central focus of my life for several months. Here, in a rather expansive article, Sebastián Edwards, a Chilean economist who teaches at UCLA, lays out the problems with the current system, describes a somewhat idealized vision of American elite higher education, and proposes that Chile radically change it's system to model the best of the American system.

I would say that many of his diagnoses are correct and his "modest proposal," although quite utopian, is quite tempting. He seems to ignore that the "quest for knowledge" liberal arts education was never really that dominant in America, and is every year less so compared to more practical majors like business (America's largest major), health fields, teaching, etc. He also makes a bogus potshot at free education, claiming that society's poorest will foot the bill for the wealthiest (not true with a progressive tas system). But still, a great but long article.

Our University Tragedy

Since no one has really gotten to the bottom of the matter, the most likely scenario is that, when the conflict is resolved, everything will continue being substantially as it is today: our higher education will continue being expensive and bad.

Six years ago - on July 24, 2005 - I published a column titled “Our University Crisis” in these pages. In that was written, “The majority of universities in Chile form ‘super-specialists’, who at an early age find themselves pigeon-holed into rigid disciplines, often without work prospects, and with little productivity. Many of these individuals become the ‘illustrious employed,’ citizens full of frustrations.”
I then then asked the then-presidential candidates - Michelle Bachelet, Sebastián Piñera, and Joaquín Lavín - to pay attention to the topic of higher education, which, in my opinion, was transforming into an obstacle for development and a time bomb.
But nobody worried about the universities with the required gravity. After all, the figures indicated that more and more young people were accessing higher education, and the number of new universities was rapidly multiplying. To the politicians’ eye, the Chilean higher education strategy was a total success.
Six years later, the university crisis is the dominant theme in the country - a topic that has already sent two education ministers packing, and that has helped discredit politicians of all stripes.
The conflict blew up for a simple, predictable reason: the students realized that the education that they were receiving was bad and expensive. Families were going into debt to send their children to college, but their children weren’t finding jobs in their areas of specialization, and when they did find them, the salaries were typically meager and barely met their student loan payments.
This situation was aggravated by two factors: the owners of the private universities - which, supposedly, were non-profit - were making lots of money, and it was the large banks that recovered the loans. All this led to a feeling of abuse and impunity and led to the conflict that has dragged on for almost a year.

Nobody focuses on what matters
The worst thing is that during this long battle, no one has worried about the truly important fact: the poor quality of our university education. Because one has to tell it like it is: our universities are not only expensive; they are also rather bad. The truth is that even our best higher education establishments are mediocre.
In the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking for 2012, there is no Chilean university among the 350 best in the world. China (including Hong Kong) has 11 in this group; Israel has 4, Korea has 7, and Singapore 2. But that’s not all, even countries much poorer than Chile have universities in this group: South Africa has 3, Iran 1, India 1, Egypt 1, and Turkey 4. Among Latin American countries, only Brazil finds itself in this group, with 2 universities among the 350 best on the planet.
Since no one has really gotten to the bottom of the matter, the most likely scenario is that, when the conflict is resolved, everything will continue being substantially as it is today: our higher education will continue being expensive and bad.
The only real difference will be, instead of the students’ families paying for this lousy education, all Chileans will contribute. Inescapably, this will mean that the poorest families, who can not even dream of sending a child to university, will pay a high fraction of the cost. This is an upside-down world, a kind of “Hood Robin” where one takes from the poor to give to the rich.
One of the first things one notes on analyzing this ranking is that 28 of the 30 top universities are in the English-speaking countries: the USA, UK, and Canada. My own UCLA is in 13th place. And if we consider the 100 top universities, 73 are from these countries (and Australia). Other rankings, including the ARWU in Shanghai - give similar results.
Before such overwhelming evidence, one would hope that the parties of our current educational conflict - the universities themselves, the student leaders, and the government authorities - would have analyzed the system used in English-speaking countries, trying to determine what they have which we lack; trying, perhaps, to emulate the positive aspects of these universities, proposing profound reforms and confronting head on the problem of quality.

Generalists and permanent education
The mediocrity of our universities is, largely, the product of an old-fashioned model. Our university system responds to needs of the middle of the past century, and is incapable of fulfilling a catalytic role in the 21st century.
Currently, the “careers” [the “majors” or “courses of study”] are rigid and form specialists with narrow, limited abilities. The 21st century requires the exact opposite. What we need is flexibility and people with a very general educational base; individuals that can adapt rapidly to technological changes and the country’s needs.
The careers are very long - six years for an engineer - and it is supposed that most people, once graduated, will not return to study more.
Many of our grads don’t know how to write and their reading comprehension is low. They don’t have basic scientific knowledge, nor know how to interpret elemental statistics, nor how to reason in a scientific and efficient way, nor to make public presentations, nor do they have the required creativity to solve problems on the fly. One of the most common situations in Chile is the professional who, confronted with a novelty, smiles with satisfaction and says “Well, no. That can’t be done.” In modern, enterprising nations, “It’s not possible” is almost never an acceptable answer.
In English-speaking countries, the universities follow a model diametrically opposed to ours, a model where the objective is to form generalists who only with graduate studies specialize in a professional field. Beyond that, these professions are not for life, since the majority of graduates will return two, three, or even four times in their lives.
I know well the case of my university, UCLA, a public university to which every year arrive thousands of young people parents barely finished high school. We form engineers in only four years, two less than in Chile. But this doesn’t effect the quality of our graduates; in fact, they are so good that according to the Times of London, UCLA is in eighth place in the category Engineering and Technology in the whole world. It is not too much to note that, by now hardly surprising, all the universities above us are from English-speaking countries.
UCLA does not graduate any lawyer from undergraduate programs, not one! Nor do we produce, at the undergrad level, psychologists, business administrators, doctors, dentists, journalists, or social workers. We have long taught these professions, but we do it in graduate schools, through master’s and doctorates. The undergrad programs at UCLA are based on the “Liberal Arts.”
Our students read classics, study science and math, do research projects, study biology and economics, take courses in experimental psychology and art, among others. All students choose a concentration, which obliges them to study a discipline in greater depth, but this doesn’t mean that they become super-specialists in the field.
We graduate flexible individuals that can solve specific problems and later, if they like, can specialize through graduate programs in any area.
But the curriculum is not the only difference; the way they learn also differs greatly. It’s not an exaggeration to say that 80% of the contents are learned through group work or individual research, only 20% comes from professor-led classes.
Businesses and other institutions - including investment banks public agencies, manufacturing companies, and museums - fight for our graduates. And as we have trained them to absorb new ideas with ease, they quickly learn their new job’s techniques and procedures. After some years, many return to the university to get a master’s, and advance in their career.

A modest proposal
The Chilean university system presents a vivid contrast to the English model. In our country, we classify our students from the first day and transform them into wise monkeys, into narrow persons, premature lawyers, depressed psychologists, and illiterate journalists.
As the great educator Patricio Meller notes, it’s fundamental that we reform the very structure of our university system. We have to leave the twentieth century and leap into the future. Leaver behind rigidity and embrace creativity and change.
This isn’t the place to discuss all the details of a truly revolutionary university reform program. But here’s a few suggestions: cut the length of the first degree to four years. The first two should be in general education with required courses in literature, math, science, statistics, economics, philosophy, political science, and psychology. Besides, every student should have to show that they can express and defend an idea in less than 500 words.
After that, students can choose a concentration. The last two years would be dedicated to specializing in a field.
The degrees would be in academic disciplines like literature, science, psychology, math, history, or philosophy. The professional training of lawyers, dentists, doctors, and the rest would be obtained in graduate school.
Besides, to graduate, every student should be effectively bilingual. That is, he should pass an exam at the level required to do graduate work in a foreign country, like the TOEFL to go to the US.
Let’s imagine, for a second, how Chile would change under this system. There would be many thousands of highly functional and productive young people, enthusiastic and full of ideas, capable of solving problems and starting businesses, committed to new and exciting political ideas. These young people would now that their life would not end upon leaving the university; on the contrary they would return many times to specialize, acquire new knowledge, or even change fields.
A country like that would be the envy of its neighbors. A Chile with this system would have fuller, more cultured - and why not - happier citizens.

In Spanish

Fire in Torres del Paine

2012-01-09T20:34:00.003-06:00

An Israeli traveller has been accused of started a wildfire in Patagonia's Torres del Paine national park. Here's an article about the situation. In Spanish

La Tercera, Saturday Jan. 7, 2012, by Michelle Chapochnick

The Bitterest Trip of Rotem Singer

Suspected of starting the fire in Torres del Paine, he left three weeks ago to travel around Latin America. In 2010 he finished his military service, where he formed part of the elite troops. In Nes Tziona, where he lives, neighbors talk about what happens.

On December 31, only hours before the New Year, the Singer family was celebrated the only of rest of the week (the Sabbath) in the small city of Nes Tziona, south of Tel Aviv. It was a day without surprises in their house on Havatzel Street, until the telephone rang. On the other side of the line with the oldest of their children, Rotem, who was on an excursion in Torres del Paine and with a faltering voice told them unexpected news: he was suspected of having started a fire in the national park and that afternoon would be booked by the local authorities.
An Israeli witness indicated to the public prosecutor of Puerto Natales that Singer had burned some toilet paper, which had sparked the wildfire which today had destroyed 15,000 hectacres [c.60 sq mi]. If found guilty, the young man could face between 41 and 61 days in prison and a fine of between 10 and 40 UTM [$800 and $3200] for breaking the Law of Forests.
Three weeks before the call, Singer bid farewell to his parents and two brothers, before beginning a six-month trip through South America. On December 21, he turned 23.
Singer had planned his trip for a long time. In mid-2010 he had returned to his home after finishing the three years of military service which his country demands when young people finish high school.
For most of his stay in the army, he was posted to an elite military unit, which generally carries out highly sophisticated activites, which include guarding the nation’s borders, among other tasks.
Upon returning to his family’s home, which had had visted on weekends during his years in the army, Singer studied maps of South America and books with information about the continent.
As is the custom with the majority of young Israelis, Singer was preparing a long journey once he finished his military service, a kind of sabatical year before entering university. The most common destinations, for their scenery and low costs, are Asia and South America. In fact, nearly 9,000 young Israelis visit Chile every year.
Singer, as well, had a special interest in travel. He had travelled Israel from North to South. Together with his family, he visited the USA, Canada, and some of Europe.
And so the young man left alone in December to take a plane in the Tel Aviv airport, in the city of his birth. He left his family in Nes Tziona, his tranquil hometown of 38 thousand inhabitants.
Singer’s itinerary would include Argentina, Chle, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. In August he would return to Israel to begin his university studies in computer science. The first stop was Ushuaia, in Argentina. Torres del Paine was the second destination for the young man, who is described by those who know him as very quiet.
Diplomatic Efforts in Israel
On December 31, whle the Singers were resting in Nes Tziona, Rotem and four other young Israelis recieved a visit from the carabineros (police) in the Josmar hostal in Puerto Natales. It was about 11 in the morning and the public proscutor of that city, Iván Vidal, had received information that pointed to these people regarding the wildfire in Torres del Paine.
After a young woman incrinimated him, Vidal interrogated Singer in an second-story office in the PDI (FBI) of that city. In a later hearing, it was said that Singer chose to remain silent and asked for a lawyer. Four hours later, wearing hiking clothes, he was charged. The Puerto Natales prosecutor’s office clamed he never incriminated himself, as the chief prosecutor of the Maganelles region, Juan Meléndez, had claimed. With the help of a translator, Singer began to understand what had happened, as well as the verdict: he could not leave the area and had to sign in once a week.
Singer’s version is was different. After the hearing, he told Israel Army Radio personality Galel Tzahal, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t think the preceedings would advance as they have. I didn’t understand what I was accused of and I never gave testimony.”
That same day, while the investigation continued, Singer moved to the hostal “Casa de Juan,” whose owner speaks Hebrew. There, he spent his time reading articles on the internet that talked about his case; meanwhile, he would receive calls several times a day from friends and relatives in Israel.
Singer’s stay in Puerto Natales was brief. The Israeli consul in Chile, Hilly Gal-Or, had arrived on Sunday, January 1st, to the city and took him to Punta Arenas. His father, Yechezkel Singer, arrived the following day from Tel Aviv. To avoid the press that had crowded into the airport, the meeting took place in the PDI in the capital of the Magallanes Region.
A member of Israel’s middle-class, Singer’s father is a business executive. Before travelling to Chile, he talked with the Israeli embassador to the country, David Dadonn, who was at the time in Israel for a conference.
After the conversation, according to diplomatic sources, the embassador promised to deliver a complete report about the younger Singer’s situation. In parallel, according to the same sources, Dadonn held meetings with the Israeli Foreign Ministry. A part of these conversations was dedicated to the deciding how to help Chile, if a citizen of their country was charged with starting the fires in Torres del Paine. In the end, a decision was made to offer technicians to help reforest the area and create a large grove of trees, which was announced a few days later.
From their house in Nes Tziona, the young man’s mother appeared uneasy about her son’s situation and alleged his innocence. Some Israeli newspapers, like Yedihot Aharonot, Haaretz, and the Jerusalem Post have run stories about the situation and how the wildfire continues to ravage Torres del Paine.
In Singer’s hometown, people are starting to talk about what’s happening. Walking through the quiet residential neighborhood, where his parents live on a cul-de-sac, a neighbor mentions, “We aren’t accustomed to people talking about us in the news.” Other people in the area don’t even know the young man. “We are not relatives. I don’t know him and I didn’t even know he lived here until I read it in the papers,” repeated in Hebrew six people with the last name Singer who were contacted by La Tercera.

Nanas

2012-01-07T16:07:00.002-06:00

As a way to keep brushing up my Spanish, I'm going to try my best to translate and post an article a day over the summer, starting with something a read a few days ago in The Clinic, Chile's strange Onion-like newspaper that combines satire with social and cultural commentary and some juvenile humor.

Recently, an exclusive golf club sent out a circular insisting that the nannies (nanas) that accompany their employer's children to the club must keep on a uniform and not use the pool. This created a scandal, and actually was retracted and declared null by a court of law. Anyway, he's the article:

The Nanas

The word nana makes me uneasy. I could say even that it causes embarassment. It represents the total deprofessionalization of domestic work. It adds a vaneer of affection, but this hides the true dynamic. A nana’s life becomes just a part of her employer’s family life. The good nana is generous, loving, self-sacrificing. She is full of goodwill. Only with her will the baby calm down, the picky child eat, and the rest of the kids stop fighting with each other. Sometimes, they humilliate her with nicknames and other signs of disrespect. One nana that I met would repeat her mantra of “patience and resignation” without a pinch of hate.
The head of the household is the law; forget about the labor laws. If there were labor laws, she’d stop being a nana and become a domestic worker. But that would imply the employer accepting a stranger in his house; someone with whom he may come to share a friendship and a sense of complicity, but who would nonetheless never pretend to be “one of the family.” And if indeed a nana came to share a kind of camaredie with her employer - something that so many families insist is the case - wouldn’t her employer then stop treating her distinctly from the family, respect her individuality, and allow her to share in the family pool? Friends, after all, play together and treat each other equally, even if one is a prince and the other a beggar.
The word nana, I suppose, comes from a child who still hasn’t learned to speak, like “mamá,” “papá,” “tata,” “ita,” “meme” and all the other pet names that we use in the family environment, where everything belongs to everyone, except the nana. There, if one speaks of money, rights, complaints, etc, the illusion of a marvelous harmony is broken. So the nana is just one of the family, except that she can’t use the same bathrooms, take a rest on any bed, or dress as she likes.
The nana is an institution with a long history. Before, they were called mama, just like mamá, but without the accent. I guess that the moms took away the accent when they saw their kids confusing them with their nannies. As well, there once was the “domestic staff,” a quite degrading term, but at least it recognizes the idea of a domestic sphere and a world beyond. In the Tom Sawyer stories, the nanas were slaves. And it goes on.
There aren’t nanas in advanced democracies. Among the very wealthy, there are maids and helpers available to solve any problem, but not sweet and loyal nanas, whose bosses aren’t bosses but fake relatives. Decades ago, there were even those domestic servants that continued working for their bankrupt patrons.
What happened at the Chicureo Golf Club is, in fact, not a scandal. Their error was only to verbalize a very wide-spread custom in our upper class. The smock, obviously, although Evelyn Matthei and the rest of the wealthy progressives will deny it until they´re blue in the face, is not only for protecting the nana’s clothes. It is, in the open, a social marker, a distinction, just as the members of the Chicureo Golf Club didn’t want to confuse themselves about who was a member. And as many of them have only recently achieved this membership, they demand evidence of this distinction. I’ve even met “ladies” that argue that the smock is necessary so that the nanas do not sexually provoke their husbands - a ridiculous error, since these little lace skirts can be quite provacative.
Be that is it is, this recent event is an advance. Whenever something unjustly considered “natural” begins to be questioned, we are looking at progress. Until yesterday, the women in their little smocks were just part of the landscape. On the beaches of the affluent, they would wade into the water taking their little princes by the hand, while the “missus” would be chatting with her face in the sun. Now, they will think twice. The scandal of being seen in a bathing suit will seem less than that of being seen in a servant’s garment. Maybe they will need to be called something other than “nanas,” perhaps even having a last name, perhaps charging for overtime, and their friendly attention will no longer be an act of submission, but a valued trait like for any other professional. We have many indicators of development nowadays: what once was completely normal is now being questioned.
The Clinic, 12-29-11, by Patricio Fernandez. article here

Who are you?

2009-11-15T08:58:00.002-06:00

I checked the statistics for this puppy for the first time in a LONG time this morning. Even though I haven't used this for months, it stll gets hits every day - sometimes 1 or 2, sometimes 10. That's not a lot less than when I wrote three times a week. Who are you? Search-engine users looking for "Chile + tamales + Chicago"? Long lost fans? I'm confused. I would shut this site down and not have an ethereal internet presence, but I want to keep some on the writing and haven't done that yet.

Cheers,

Michael

Whaaa? New post!

2009-08-09T08:21:00.003-05:00

I checked on this for the first time in nearly two months, and saw that I left the blog hanging with a really random post. I think every reader of this blog knows in general that I've been traveling quite a bit this summer, and have now settled in the city of Concepción, Chile to teach English for the next four months. Please note that Chile is spelled with an "e" and is pronounced "chee-LAY." The accent on the "o" of Concepción just makes me feel sophisticated, so deal with it. If you don't want to use an accent on Concepción (cone-sep-see-OWN), just write its nickname, Conce (CONE-say).

Previous to going to Concepción, I spent time on a trip from Chicago through Minnesota and North Dakota, Montana and Idaho, and Washington state. I was also in Pennsylvania, Guatemala and Santiago, but have not uploaded pictures of that adventure. Photos of Concepción are here.

As previously mentioned, travel-blogging tends to get tedious (I'm somewhere new! You're not!), but as I settle in more and more, it may not feel like travel so much and I may continue the more mundane blogging of the past. However, I'm also trying to write more real emails, so you never know. Don't check maniacally, save the trouble.

Things I saw in my last two days.

2009-06-17T11:46:00.006-05:00

Today was my last day at work. I had a lovely, yummy, filling lunch with the department at Noodles, and returned to find some parting items that accent the extreme weirdness and diversity of materials that find their way into major research libraries. 4 faves:

1. You know that it's bad when an author feels the need to issue a tortuous apology for the content of a book and have it printed on the back. Today I found this on the back of a photo book from 1949 depicting various aspects of Japanese life (called, unsurprising, Japan, by Horace Brace:

It [the format of the book] also results in the inclusion of one or two rather trivial and unimportant sketches, included frankly to enliven the tone of the book as a whole. To put it bluntly, to sell the volume to the average reader. For this I must apologize to you, whom I know to a reader of superior taste and refinement; I must admit, though, that I, too, take a sneaking second look at those sections.

What was so deserving of such an apology? A little anthropological skin, a la National Geographic. I highly doubt that Japanese girls dive for pearls completely naked when foreign photographers aren't around. But would they reconsider if they knew the photographer was going to "take a sneaking second look"? Ew.

2. Speaking of ew, "Color Atlas of Human Dissection." Including 70's haircuts. To answer the question I've gotten three times now, there were photos, not diagrams.

3. Cataloging follies: a random German book catalogued under the following categories:

Women.
Feminism.
Women - Psychology.
Sex.
Love.

Huh?

4. Speaking of huh, I found a map called Where Chicago Gets Its Milk

The final "Book Covers of Our Lives" post

2009-06-16T15:39:00.005-05:00

I lost my life. Where is it? Chile, Montana, Guatemala, Pennsylvania? Chicago (in which case, I definitely won't find it soon...)?

Just cute:

This is where the part about not seeing in 3D comes in handy: no stupid glasses for me!

That is one scary baby and one ugly book cover:

And here are four book covers I drew when I was studying the Master and Margarita in 2003. I find them while moving and purging old notebooks:

Chinese acrobats

2009-06-13T11:40:00.004-05:00

I went to see Cirque Shangai last night at Navy Pier with a good friend who had scored some free tickets. I had a great time and was pretty impressed with the various ridiculous feats of strength and flexibility, juggling of hats and basketballs, and fluttering of wings and flags. It was a great time, and the whole spectacle... well, someone had done a lot of drugs before setting down to create the crazy backdrops and costumes. I would definitely recommend for a good time.

I'm also doing a bit of juggling myself. I have only a few days left of work, and then I'm off for brief stints in Montana, Pennsylvania, and Guatemala, before finally making my way down to Chile. I tried to get in various doctor's appointments, seeing longtime friends, and doing various Chicago things. I've also been trying to make myself scarce for the last week or so as I have been shuffling through other people's places and trying not to be burdensome.

On the subject of this blog, it is unclear what form if any it will continue to take. Currently I have no internet access (besides no time), and in the various travels my both my internet access and motivation may be spotty as well. Travel blogs have a tendency to die quick deaths after auspicious starts anyway, given the options of living your travel experience and detaching yourself from your travel experience to display it for others.

In other news: I highly recommend Garden, Ashes and A Voyage Long and Strange, the last two books I read. The only problem with the former is that I did not agree with the back cover blurb on whether a main character died (seriously), and the only problem with the latter was the author's sometimes snarky tone - he really, really, really, did not like his stay in the Dominican Republic. And it was made very clear. Currently I am wading through the epic 2666, which has been mesmerizing so far. I'm planning on taking a copy with me to Guatemala, largely because it's so long that it should last through the trip.

Lakefront déjà vu

2009-06-09T12:45:00.002-05:00

The Tribune reported today on the Friends of the Parks plan to eliminate the last 4 miles of private lakefront.

Have I heard that before? Yes.

Scandals

2009-05-30T11:57:00.002-05:00

You want scandals, we got scandals. It's Illinois.

U of I (my barely-former institution of higher learning) was exposed to have a secret list of applicants with clout, who appear to have gotten in thanks to their connections with state government officials. The smoking gun emails are quite choice. And choicest of all, some political insiders' and felons' children got a free ride.

That makes the standard alderman-took-bribes story pretty boring. Except that his father also took bribes.

And who needs bribes when you can Photoshop an "Official Business" sign?

See, the Tribune is, occasionally, good for something these days.

Story of stuff, pt. 2

2009-05-28T14:43:00.002-05:00

I totally agree that we could all use less stuff, but that doesn't mean that I haven't had to send 5 large boxes and two smaller ones to my parents' house as I move out of my apartment... and yet, and yet. I STILL have a whole lotta of stuff to give away.

And surprisingly, people can be real picky about what they get for free. It's annoying.

Fidelity déjà vu

2009-05-28T10:30:00.007-05:00

Several weeks back, I posted the Courage Campaign's Fidelity video, a campaign video done to the tunes of Regina Spektor.

After Tuesday's Prop 8 ruling, the Campaign was immediately back with a shorter version of the video, below, that will be airing on California televisions soon. It's still a very powerful video which asks very troubling questions, but overall it's message is a bit more confusing than the simple plea to "Don't Divorce Us"*

I also went on Tuesday night to the Day of Decision protest and march down Halsted Street. Although never fully comfortable with or embedded within Chicago's or Hyde Park's or the U of C's activists subcultures, I have seen my fair share of political events and this one was a nearly magical moment - something I can not say about the majority of hackneyed, half-assed, off-key actions that I have seen. The only comparable moment was the enormous collective cry of anguish by the half-million folks at the immigration march on May Day, 2006.

Unlike many other events, speeches were brief, emotion was real, and the focus was relentlessly targeted at the subject and hand. Even the speakers identified as members of the International Socialist Organization and The World Can't Wait (a Marxist front, but not even a front because it's so obvious) completely avoided discussing irrelevant matters like Iraq or Israel, Colombian union organizers or American "political prisoners." The only tangent into foreign affairs was roundly and vociferously booed, and the speaker got back on track - the case for marriage equality was made so simply with complete honesty and a call for - yes - empathy.

Both the May Day rally and this one on Tuesday were so simple, heartfelt and entirely genuine because the issues involved were so personal. Bringing private matters into the public square means bringing the profound emotions of private life into conflict with the dreary, technocratic discourse of law and policy. This conflict, when too well-honed, can seem needlessly confessional and not a little creepy. But when it rises organically from the situation at hand, such confessions are incredibly powerful. On May Day, people said "my father is illegal," but "let us live a normal life out of the shadows," and "keep our family together." The human drama of millions of lives was shown to conflict with the categories provided by the legal and political system. At the Day of Decision rally, the message was in some sense the same: "acknowledge our existence" and create a legal and political system that takes seriously the life experiences of millions of people.

I was a bit surprised to find myself at this particular event. I understand the argument, as put forth by the reasonable columnist Steve Chapman (who unfortunately has a bombastic headline writer). The people voted, we lost, what else is there to talk about? Pass the salt. I also haven't lost my unease with the concept of protesting any court decisions - if one thing has ever been clear from history, it's the incredibly horrible consequences of "revolutionary courts," the marriage of outside social pressures and the legal apparatus. But I would hope the U.S. court system is strong often to withstand a little protesting so that the other benefits of taking the streets - making your existence and distress known through the media - can go ahead.

The legal arguments boiled down to the rather ethereal question of whether Prop 8 was an "amendment" or a "revision." The gay rights lawyers argued that by restricting marriage rights of one group of people, Prop 8 struck at the concept of equal protection, a fundamental aspect of the California Constitution. The other side argued, more or less, that equal protection was neither here nor there. The amendment simply clarified for the state of California the definition of marriage, which has become ambiguous over the last decades as various governments, churches, and other institutions have taken diverse views on the topic.

In short, can Prop 8 be taken at face value or only viewed as a thinly-veiled way to gut a core constitutional principle?

Thought experiment: Imagine that Prop 8 had said marriages between people born over thirty years apart** were not considered marriages in California. The court could respond either (1) "I'm sorry, you may not like those marriages, but they're obviously marriages. They're not iguanas. This proposition's only purpose is to restrict the rights of a group of people," or (2) "OK. There was a legitimate question as to what a marriage was and the people of California have clarified it." Option (2) would be insane.

To me, life-long same-sex partnerships are not iguanas. Perhaps they don't exactly fit the prototype of "marriage." If they did, the adjective gay in "gay marriage" would be as bizarre as Asian in "Asian marriage" - pretty weird! But they certainly fit into the category of marriage better than any other current category. They not iguanas, nor are they "partnerships," "relationships," "cohabitations," or "friendships." We could create a new category for them ("civil unions"), but this is needlessly complicated. Why not just call them marriages and call it a day? It's close enough and it's what people within these relationships use to talk about themselves. And while that isn't an unimpeachable argument (a monk may claim to be married to Jesus, but he's still single legally), people's self-concepts are important facts in themselves.

Lastly, in the way that names can create reality, calling these relationships marriages will over time cause them to be even more similar to the prototypical marriage, with the attendant children, dogs, picket fences, and monogamy. At that time, it will be hard to understand what the big to-do was all about.

*Technically, the California Supreme Court did not divorce anyone. The 18,000 marriages already performed were allowed to stand. In that sense, the plea in the original video was heeded.

**I chose this to avoid the complex politics of comparing gay and interracial marriage

Beaches open, eroding

2009-05-24T20:45:00.004-05:00

Chicago's beaches opened yesterday, including the new one at 41st St. But it was extremely windy today and not quite beach weather despite any wishful thinking on my part. Very few people were out and I didn't linger at all. However, I did notice the beating that the waves were making on the brand new beach:

Cake Wrecks Turns One

2009-05-21T07:15:00.002-05:00

Yesterday at work there was a retirement party for a co-worker that had a really, really decadent delicious raspberry-cream cake, oh my goodness I could keep going but I won't.

But it got me thinking about that old standby, Cake Wrecks. So here's some shameless promotion for another blog: Cake Wrecks Turns One

(In honor of my upcoming adventures, I chose a Spanglish cake)

When French book covers attack!

2009-05-20T16:32:00.001-05:00

It's been too long since I posted a simple, crazy post from my simply crazy job. The following needs no explanation:

Big news

2009-05-18T20:08:00.004-05:00

So… big exciting news!

1. I graduated. It was a long, boring ceremony but I brought crossword puzzles under my flowing robe. We get not get the President, unlike Notre Dame, but we also did not get Mayor Daley, unlike a different school at UIC. Instead, we got a speaker somewhere between the two in power – Gov. Pat Quinn. Sadly, Gov. Quinn’s speech was written on the way there and it showed, unlike a certain speech by Abraham Lincoln, whom he mentioned several times without much point. There was something in there about serving others, and some “this is what makes America great.” lines – but I have no idea what this was, nor did Gov. Quinn seem aware that other countries have universities also, or that many graduates were not American.

Still, Gov. Quinn is in Illinois governor who is not in jail, has never been to jail, and will likely never go to jail. Who cares if his greatest accomplishment is something as boring as setting up the Citizens Utility Board? We have to take what we can get!

Unlike our dear governor, our dear dean actually gave a short and inspiring speech, as well as belting out God Bless America. It was centered on this Marianne Williamson quote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

By far the most amusing part of graduation was that there were no handshakes, due to swine flu and I’m not even joking. Would I joke? However, it seems that the university got a lot of mocking in the press for that decision, and by the time graduation rolled around, the announcement became “As you may have read through official channels or in the Sun-Times, there will be no handshakes. But there might be a fist-bump or two.” Actually, there were ~1,500 fist bumps, and one of them is below.

2. I am moving from Chicago in about a month. I will be doing a bit of traveling for the next month (North Dakota, Montana, Nicaragua [?], Colombia [?]) and then heading to Santiago, Chile for a week and then to as yet undetermined city in Chile to be a TA for a university English department for a semester. Some things are still in the air about it – the job duties (be an assistant for the whole department, or like in America be a “TA” but really just teach my own class) being the most obvious. But I am super, super excited as evidenced if by nothing else then by the fact that I bought and basically read cover to cover the Lonely Planet Chile guide.

3. I’ve spent some time the last week doing some Chicago favorites as well as just biking the Lakefront and checking out the city that has been home for nearly eight years. OK, for the first year to two years I was like most students a tourist and an outsider in my own city, but since then I have been voting, following the news, participating in rallies, making friends outside the U of C bubble, walking and more recently biking all over town, becoming a regular at decidedly non-touristic establishments, going to a decidedly local institution (despite its pretensions), and even making the news. But there’s still new stuff to see and do: today I checked out Northerly Island for the first time, yesterday I went to Northeastern for the first time for an event, and well… the list could go on.

A small number of recently taken photos are here.

One thing that's going to have to change is my strategy of speaking Spanish... this weekend I went to a Mexican Book Fair, and despite having practiced in my head on the way all kinds of stuff, I got totally flustered and didn't say more than sí or no the whole time. It was kind of a lame event (mostly for kids) anyway, but that was no excuse. However, I did find this gem recently:

…mejor ser lapidado
en las plazas que dar vuelta a la noria
que exprime la sustancia de la vida,
cambia la eternidad en horas huecas,
los minutos en cárceles, el tiempo
en monedas de cobre y mierda abstracta.

///

…better be killed by stoning
in the public square than tread the mill that grinds
out into nothing the substance of our lives,
changes eternity into hollow hours,
minutes into penitentiaries, and time
into some copper pennies and abstract shit.

-Octavio Paz (Piedra de Sol / Sun Stone, 1957)

No soy asesino, ni narcotraficante

2009-05-14T08:23:00.006-05:00

I saw the most astounding story in the Hoy yesterday. Apparently, Guatemala's president, Álvaro Colom, just had an “I am not a crook” moment. What the headline said was No soy asesino, ni soy narcotraficante (I am not an assassin, nor am I a drug trafficker). Oh dear, I thought. This is going to be good!

And it was.

In a story of intrigue fit for a movie, Rodrigo Rosenberg was a lawyer for Khalil Musa, a businessman in Guatemala. Musa was recently murdered – apparently for preparing to reveal corruption between Guatemala’s largest bank and its government. I know, unsavory ties between a bank and a government? What crazy country would allow that? Anyway, recently Rosenberg became convinced that he was also going to be murdered. So he recorded a final video with instructions to post it on Youtube in that event. Unfortunately, that event occurred within a very short period of time, the video became a sensation, and Colom had to go public with his “I am not an assassin nor a drug trafficker” line – whether it will bring down the government, who knows.

This mix of new media and old-school politics, the creepy prescience of filming the video, the uncomfortable similarities with other “martyrdom” videos, and the obvious resonances with our own politicians (“I am not a crook” “The United States of America does not torture”) appear to make an unbeatable story. So it’s somewhat shocking to me that I only found it reported in Hoy! and on the BBC. Partially, it is a complicated story – it’s still unclear to me what the political implications of it are, as Colom is a moderate leftist, voted in at least in part due to the revulsion from the murder of Juan Gerardi, as reported in this fantastic book and fictionalized in this equally fantastic book.

From part one of Rosenberg’s video:

“ ‘What can we do,’ we say. But we have to do something, and the only way to do something is to say what we already know.”

I also checked in with Jonathan Mann of the Rock Cookie Bottom song-a-day website. It seems he's had another mini-hit (60,000+ views). In this song, he finds poetry in the damnedest place - the Bybee/Yoo torture memos. Like Jenny Holzer's recent show at the MCA, in which she blew up to monumental size and gave an iridescent glow to Iraq invasion plans and a coroner's report on the death of an Iraqi prisoner of war, sometimes presenting information nearly unaltered but in a new light or a new medium can create a mesmerizing and disturbing effect. You be the judge:

FYI, the Convention Against Torture is available here. It's amazing just how many "pro-torture" talking points are systematically dealt with and dispatched in the first several articles. After all, we ratified the treaty so it's the law of the land. Period. I had a heated argument recently about the absolute necessity to bring to trial whomever was involved from the top down (and I do mean the top and I do mean the bottom). Obama's footdragging and excuse making - and his inexcusable concession to an unfounded talking point ("that torture may have produced useful information" - even though actual high level interrogators testified in congress yesterday that it didn't) - does make me somewhat distraught. Today we find out that the administration is backtracking on a judge's orders to release prisoner abuse photos. My friend claims that the administration, particularly Obama, is just going out of its way to let the investigation take a leisurely pace and appear (and be) as depoliticized as possible, emanating solely from the justice department. I doubt that any amount of optics will depoliticize the process from the standpoint of the rabid right, and the leisurely pace may allow torturers to get away with indeed, murder.

Story of stuff

2009-05-12T20:05:00.001-05:00

Those people with 20 minutes to kill, enjoy the Story of Stuff (h/t to NYTimes):

Probably a really late biking FYI

2009-05-12T13:52:00.004-05:00

Two of the most evil obstacles to bikers in Chicago have recently been removed.

The fenced area around the condo construction just west of Target on Roosevelt no longer extends into the bike lane causing an uncomfortably tight squeeze with rather fast cars headed across that bridge. This makes the bridge less suicidal, and means that the very bumpy, potholed and steep alternative of 18th street is no longer needed.

Also, the really evil lakefront path detour around Museum Campus has been cleared up. No more riding among families of tourists, surburbanites (and, yes, clueless Chicagoans) that are sort of just standing there gazing at the Field Museum or the Shedd. And I admit that the new underpass is kind of awesome and the detour may have been worth it, even if I exit Chicago in jsut a few months (or less).

Today was a beautiful day - still is - for getting out and about. I am seriously confused with my newly found sense of free time.

Three photos from just north of the new underpass.
Pretty standard stuff - but go sun go!

Yesterday a friend who loves gardening and has lived in Chicago for five years told me that he'd never been to the Garfield Park Conservatory. I was like, "What?!?" and so we immediately went. Below are some Chihuly lilies:

Festival of the Arts time at U of C = GIANT DRESS:

Alive!

2009-05-08T16:25:00.003-05:00

I am alive, and I am graduating Sunday. It was a bit uglier than I expected getting there (both the last two weeks and the last two years). But here's hoping it was worth it.

The weather was/is beautiful today and I snapped a few photos for the first time in a while. No, the U of C hospital did not burn down - it's just being partially demolished to make way for a better, more fabulous hospital.

Or something.

Temorary shut-down

2009-04-16T20:59:00.001-05:00

Just letting you all know, I'm taking some time off from being online. Between work and school, I'm going to be too busy (and staring at a screen for 40+ hrs a week) for the next few weeks to update.

PEEP!!! (aka Happy Easter)

2009-04-12T08:51:00.005-05:00

We try to be ecumenical here at the Stone. I was planning on taking a photo of some ridiculous holiday lights from the neighborhood. House holiday decorations are the gift that keeps on giving in Bridgeport! And Easter did not disappoint, from the bunny lights, to the bunny-eating-a-carrot decal (which looks disturbingly like a bunny-mermaid, head of bunny and body of carrot). The best decoration I saw was some lights that just spelled PEEP in yellow, and which looked disturbingly like POOP.

Unfortunately, last night the inside lights were on and there was a whole family in the room next to the PŒP lights, so I declined to take a photograph. So just use your powers of imagination.

Isstead, I'll celebrate Easter by posting a video which references the wrong Jewish holiday for this time of year. It's a Youtube remake of a song by Regina Spektor, she of the gay marriage Fidelity video. After hearing that song, I actually bought a couple of her CD's, one of which is terrific, one of which is so-so (or worse) and both of which are really short. My poor roommate has being hearing her a lot, because I do get fixated on specific songs for months. But this too shall pass!

Happy Passover

2009-04-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

Olympic Cycling

2009-04-07T11:54:00.003-05:00

On Sunday, I went on a somewhat long bike ride down Ogden all the way to Cicero. It was not that scenic, but Douglas Park was quite nice. It is very similar to Sherman Park and perhaps other Chicago parks from the same era. The Olympic cycling event will take place there if Chicago gets the 2016 Games, as these banners helpfully pointed out. I didn't see the IOC representatives that were touring the sites that day. I did see several cops guarding the premises, however.

On the way home at UIC, I saw several very sad floats from the Greek Parade parked in a line. Here's one:

All in all, not the most thrilling day but better than sitting around pretending to work (like I'm doing now!

And just an FYI: it's heartrending, not heartrendering.

Another, highly delayed, answer.

2009-04-02T16:37:00.004-05:00

A while back, I asked a question about Barack Obama. Would his election be world-historic, in that a democratic country would elect a member of a traditionally oppressed minority group?

Little did I know, but he wouldn't even be the first person from Hyde Park to be elected head of state as the member of a minority group. Janet Jagan, who died recently, was a Jewish American socialist who became the president of Guyana, a nation with basically no white people and no Jews. The relevant racial categories in Guyana are Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese. Jagan was neither, but she was affiliated politically and through her husband with the Indo-Guyanese, who are the more rural and poorer group. That made her presidency remarkable (she was the first woman head of state freely elected in Latin America, too).

It sounds like her life would make for a really awesome biography or even biopic (although the latter would certainly play down the Marxism).

boobs boobs boobs

2009-03-31T13:11:00.003-05:00

I seriously love this guy. You can waste time too by listening to his song-a-day:

Economics, the musical

2009-03-30T19:46:00.004-05:00

Newsweek this week did a cover story on Paul Krugman. It mentioned, and I sought at this fabulous video about him:

And after I saw that, I clicked my way to this gem:

dunes dunes dunes (y mucho más!)

2009-03-29T09:46:00.007-05:00

On Thursday, a classmate and I went down to the Indiana Dunes to walk around, soak in some nature, and go to a beach marginally less artificial than Chicago's beaches. The day was cool - around 60 and breezy - but it was surprisingly warm in the sun and after climbing on the Dunes we had to strip some layers. Although the dunes are less than 200 feet high, climbing up sand is fairly challenging and I was definitely panting. However, there was great rewards at the top - a lake view on the horizon, complete isolation or the illusion thereof, and even wildlife! We spotted a very red-headed woodpecker, and I'm pretty sure it was the first time I've seen one in a non-animated form. We weren't one hundred percent sure it was a woodpecker, but then - ratatatatata - it helpfully gave us the signal a bit later in the day.

My first two years in Chicago, our dorm had spring "field trips" to the Dunes, but I never went, and somehow I got the impression that they were rather uninspiring and lame. While they are indeed not majestic, and I'm sure that on popular summer weekends they are filled to the gills with Chicagoans, on a Thursday morning in March, they were nearly empty (besides a family at the beach we saw literally no one for most of the three hours) and quite a perfect break from city life.

However, posting the pictures from the Dunes have shown me the perils of *too much internet presence*. Since one photo had my classmate, I had to put it on Facebook, but since I wanted to share with a few non-FB internet friends and family, I had to put it on Picasa too. I also had to organize it on my own computer in iPhoto for personal OCD reasons. So I spent an undisclosed amount of time on a dozen and change photos. Ugh. Maybe there's something to be said for tangible photo scrapbooks!

Anyway, a link to the photos is below this picture:

From Indiana Dunes 3/26/09

Not since the famous Cows On the Beach have I made someone stop the car and do a U turn so I could photograph a sign. But this one was worth it!!! For the non-Hispanohablantes out there, it reads "All alcoholic beverages are prohibited" so yeah, I guess if you speak Spanish, they really don't want you to drink beer! And yet, apparently only English speakers need to be warned about bacterial levels:

On the way back from the Dunes, we stopped in a Flying J's truck stop for the washroom and an undisclosed purchase. While I was standing around, I heard the following conversation between security guard and a random guy:

Security guard: Is the woman in the truck your wife?
Guy: No.
SG: How do you know her?
G: She was just down the road. She wanted a ride here.
SG: I see... is she workin'?
G: I don't know. Not for ME anyway!

At this point, it became somewhat obvious that I was listening so I had to scram. But I can report that the two parted after a few minutes and no cuffs were involved. The whole thing gave me a hankering to watch Transamerica again, though. The more Dolly Parton the better, really.

Like a couple previous trips to Wisconsin, the trip to the Dunes was VERY mind-clearing and stress-relieving. It left me prepared to take on the world, although today I may not be taking on so much as my block since it's snowing and nasty out there. Yet coming in just a few months, I may be taking on the entire Upper Midwest and West, and perhaps soon after that going even further afield.

But that is a story for another day. In the meantime, a solid article about the challenges facing Facebook and a terrific radio story about getting unwanted Facebook friend requests (to hear the story, delete the "/view" from the address that I linked).

My second bonus

2009-03-28T00:07:00.002-05:00

In preparation for an eventual move, I thinned the herd (herd of books, that is) by about 40%. It took these six boxes to bring them to Powell's, but sadly they only got me $48. But on the positive side of the ledger, Powell's puts the books that it isn't interested in outside the door and they are snatched up gratis by the swarms of bookworms that range around the HP. So someone, somewhere is probably already suffering through the Marx-Engels Reader.

Don't worry!!! I'm kidding, of course I didn't give away the Marx-Engels Reader. How else would I prove that I was in a U of C soc class?! But someone is suffering through a lot of boring books, but also some really fantastic ones that I just didn't think I'd personally read again.

Nous Parlons le Russe

2009-03-25T16:18:00.004-05:00

Look at this lovely car dealership advertisement. It appears in the RedEye every week:

But look closer, and you'll find something totally inscrutable: Nous Parlons le Russe. I might not speak French, but I know enough French to know that means "We speak Russian."

Why would you advertise your Russian speaking abilities in French in an English-speaking country? I wouldn't advertise that "Se habla alemán" in Russia, now would I?

BTW, "in Polish" in Polish is po polsku, not pulsku.

Also, "we speak" in Polish is mówimy, not mowimy. And "we drink cold beer" is "pijemy chłodne piwo," just in case you were interested.

Makes me wonder what the Arabic says, maybe "Don't buy these *@!#% lemons!"

Delicious and adorable

2009-03-23T16:11:00.003-05:00

Yesterday at work I ran across the following two book covers:

Now, I KNOW you want to go to the "Hunting Food and Drinking Wine" conference. It's a bloody shame that it happened in 2003!

As for the penguins, well, penguins! Apparently the Germans, like the Australians, know how to sell books and wine - put a little penguin in the label/cover.

In other news, a funny fact check on the Iceland story.

Work during Spring Break?!

2009-03-23T07:29:00.003-05:00

Facebook: ✓
Emailing sister: ✓
Complain to roommate: ✓

It seems that this blog is the last place to complain that although it's Spring Break, I have an assignment due at 3 PM today. Of course, I had 2 weeks to do it, but... yeah. Why would I do that? It's not like I was going to be in Cancun over the break!

In other news: Krugman's take on the latest Geithner-Paulson give away.

Basically, what I said

2009-03-22T08:58:00.002-05:00

Of course, some of my ideas came from his previous columns, but still. Frank Rich still has a penchant for some great turns of phrase:

In general, it’s hard to imagine taxpayers shelling out billions for a second bank bailout unless there’s a full accounting of every dime of the first, and true transparency for the new plan whose rollout is becoming the most attenuated striptease since the heyday of Gypsy Rose Lee.

Tale of two bonuses

2009-03-20T07:40:00.000-05:00

The AIG scandal is way too juicy not to join in. The depth, breadth, and creativity of the outrage is a thing to beauty. Congress gave us the simple "We want our money back and we want our money back know" (Pelosi) and the gruesome "Take a cue from the Japanese: resign and go kill yourselves," (Grassley) but the general public did one better. After one Thomas Friedman article, the most recommended comment suggested a "a large glassed in island somewhere in the South China sea sounds about right for some 25,000 or so of the worst offenders, while the second-most recommended comment pointed out:

Tom, when commenting on banks and bank-bailouts, you should disclose to your readers that your in-laws are major stakeholders in General Growth Properties, a financially troubled real estate investment trust, which is at this moment highly dependent on the kindness of its bank creditors.

So yeah, basically the only people buying what they're selling are people directly employed, funded, or lobbied by the most egregious offenders.

Funny story: in the same week that the AIG bonus story exploded, I also got a bonus. That's right, I walked home with a fat $60. But I digress.

The crazy thing about the AIG bonuses is that although they are unseemly to say the least, they number in the millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the many bailouts number in the hundreds of billions of dollars and the most-less reported Fed intervention numbers in the trillions of dollars. They're a drop in the bucket, or in this case, the trough.

But even though they're a drop in the trough, they've served to educate the public about how obscene the whole enterprise is. The House has rushed through legislation to stop the misuse of bailout funds, and the Senate is quickly doing the same. There's one problem: once the misuse of bailout funds is stripped away, there's not a whole lot of bailout left. Basically, "if we can't embezzle the funds, we're not interested." Or, as this article in WaPo puts it:

Congress moved yesterday to levy punitive taxes on bonuses paid by financial firms receiving government aid, threatening to undermine federal efforts to rescue the financial system by driving away participants in the programs.

There's one problem, however, with the way that this article frames the problem. Crucially, the government is not trying to "rescue the financial system," it's trying to rescue a few bloated, insolvent banks, car manufacturers, and in the case of AIG, companies with no particular purpose at all (at least, no particular plan to earn income, a pets.com with an Art Deco headquarters). Let me explain:

Thousands of banks around the country that never entered a subprime loan, never issued CIVs or CDSs or MBSs or any other three-letter hocus-pocused financial instrument. For example, there's Citizens South of Gastonia, NC, profiled here. It is fully capitalized, is continuing to loan at the usual rate, and has only been able to watch in several parts horror and one part schadenfreude as the largest banks in this country reap what their greed and stupidity has sown and collapse just down the road in Charlotte. While it may take a hit as the economy contracts, it's not going to collapse. And the solvency and business practices of thousands of banks like it proves that the financial system is *not* in a state of collapse either. It's only a handful of gargantuan, stupid, greedy institutions that ignored the very basics of solid business principles.

I freely admit to sometimes ranging on the fringes of the far left (strange, because I tend to be cast as a conservative in classes if I call out lazy leftist thinking about "resistance," "recontextualization", "Othering" or a hundred other psuedo-Marxist buzzwords), but in this instance I'm practically a disciple of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. See, U of C core classes did teach me something. (Shout-out to you, Ben Lazier, wherever you may be!) Capitalism requires creative destruction. Companies can and should take risks, but if those risks backfire, they should go out of business. AIG is in insurance - so they should be experts at determining risk - hello, didn't they pass their actuarial exams? If they fell down on the job, they should go out of business. Simple as that.

The government seems to believe that some of AIG's clients should get money back for the good of the national economy. In other words, the government is not interested in AIG per se, but wants to use it as a conduit to sustain the financial health of its creditors (clients). This starts to look fishy since some of its creditors are not even American - as the New York Times reports, "Big foreign banks also received large sums from the rescue, including Société Générale of France and Deutsche Bank of Germany, which each received nearly $12 billion; Barclays of Britain ($8.5 billion); and UBS of Switzerland ($5 billion)." Why not let the European Central Bank or Europe's national governments inject cash into these institutions? On the other hand, some of AIG's clients are near-bankrupt states like California and Illinois. It's obviously in the national interest to keep those states afloat (please! we're sorry about Blago!), but money can be transferred to the states without going through the middlemen at AIG, who apparently will skim the top to pay for their bonuses, manis, and pedis.

I don't want to belittle the depth of our ecomonic problems. People are losing jobs, losing their nest eggs, and losing their homes. The economy needs to be stimulated by other means - tax cuts, infrastructure spending, health and education reform. Even cash outlays to inteligent, prudent banks like the thousands across the country that are *not* in trouble would be a great idea. Private institutions may be a better distributor of capital than the government. But the only banks that should be trusted with distributing capital are those that proved they could do it in the past - that is, banks wouldn't otherwise be bankrupt!

Why isn't this happening? I hate to say it, but it seems that Obama's ear has been taken over by a small cabal of economic advisers (the tax-cheat Geithner, the women-can't-do-math Summers, and the hold-over Bernanke) who worked for or with Goldman Sachs. They're funneling hundreds of billions to their BFF's because they can't take the shame of failure, not just for their company, but for the high-flying system it represents. It's time to see the bank bailouts not as a well-intentioned plan that went awry, but as a plan that has worked exactly as intended for those who crafted it and those who benefit from it. Iraq reconstruction is no longer the "Greatest Fraud in US History". It's been surpassed by the Trillion Dollar Crime Scene.

I still strongly support Obama, and his big three policy objectives: energy, education, and healthcare, will improve the lives of tens of millions of people, not to mention save some polar bears! It will shift the country back towards a fundamentally just path for the first time in decades. But it could all be undone by the criminal conniving of his economic team. And the results of a pushback from his opponents could be very scary.

Of course, Obama's Vietnam is no picnic either.

Plants Plants Plants

2009-03-18T08:32:00.002-05:00

As the amount of writing I do for school goes up, the amount of writing I do here goes down. It was also 73° yesterday. Without further ado, I bring you PLANTS:

Gay animal roundup...

2009-03-15T10:16:00.004-05:00

Since it was just referenced in a comment, I may was as share for you all the latest in the animal kingdom. Meet Ben and Jerry:

They are the "rare male ducks that are quackers for each other," according to a journalist named Luke Salkeld who was having way too much fun reporting on this story. To be clear, it's not rare for male ducks to be quackers for each other, they just happen to be rare ducks, in addition to being male and quackers for each other. And sadly, that means the end of the blue duck in the UK, although since it was an introduced species, some environmentalists may argue that that is a good thing. Perhaps we can find some backing in this story for Pope Benedict's claim that gender theory will doom mankind. And maybe it would, if anyone could read more than two pages of it without feeling like taking a shower to wash off the French pomo buzzwords. Ugh.

In other animal news: pink dolphin (Thanks for the tip, Carla):

Image: Caters News

Cross your arms

2009-03-14T11:37:00.004-05:00

Although the abstract is of course written in detached scientific language, it's still funny to me. The take-away: cross your arms if you want to be stubborn when confronted with difficult/unsolvable problems:

Two experiments investigated the hypothesis that arm crossing serves as a proprioceptive cue for perseverance within achievement settings. Experiment 1 found that inducing participants to cross their arms led to greater persistence on an unsolvable anagram. Experiment 2 revealed that arm crossing led to better performance on solvable anagrams, and that this effect was mediated by greater persistence. No differences in comfort, instruction adherence, or mood were observed between the arms crossed and control conditions, and participants appeared to be unaware of the effect of arm crossing on their behavior. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the interplay between proprioceptive cues and contextual meaning.

The effect of arm crossing on persistence and performance
European Journal of Social Psychology
Volume 38, Issue 3, Date: April/May 2008, Pages: 449-461
Ron Friedman, Andrew J. Elliot

This gorilla is persisting on an unsolvable anagram at the National Zoo. (Image: Eric Kilby)

A very long article you won't read.

2009-03-08T10:29:00.004-05:00

But if you did read it, you would be glad to live in America, not Iceland, where the entire country acted like the most reckless sector of Wall Street and ended up with $330,000 of debt for every man, woman, or child. And since there are about 330,000 men, women and children in Iceland, perhaps they were just trying to make an aesthetic statement. You know, like Björk:

Image: adhoe.com

Actually, the article makes a case that the problem was too many PhDs. Obama, are you listening? Maybe college shouldn't be an automatic entitlement. At least, PhD's in finance and economics DEFINITELY shouldn't be.

Kitty t-shirts!

2009-03-07T18:25:00.000-06:00

In case you wondered, yes, I still get weekly emails about Threadless shirts. The last few months have been almost universally bleh.

But they recently reprinted Mr. Mittens' Big Adventure.

Unfortunately, they do not make a kitty-sized version, unlike this penguin suit.

Thanks Kei for the pic. Too bad it's $180!!! And one size fits all? They haven't met my cat.

Buy art. For me.

2009-03-06T14:09:00.003-06:00

My lovely co-worker and artistka Margarita has her first solo exhibit up now and it's fantastic. So go buy me some art.

Horse's Ass

2009-03-05T22:05:00.004-06:00

It was an outrageously nice day, so instead of doing work I rode to Skokie. Unfortunately, there was some vicious wind on the way back so I was quite exhausted when I got back to UIC.

Ice on Lake Michigan

Welcome to Skokie!

From Skokie Ride 3/5/09

Horse's Ass!

This is the division between Skokie and Chicago. Chicago = ugly apartment buildings. Skokie = CAKE!!!

Full photos.

One study, one library cataloguing funny:

2009-03-05T08:07:00.003-06:00

A study at Stanford has found that expressing support for Barack Obama grants people "psychological license" to express preference for whites later in the conversation. I'm not sure whether to day LOL, duh, OMG, or something equally inarticulate. Wow.

Favorite cataloguing funny of the last few days:

Organic farming - France - Comic books, strips, etc.

Yeah, I definitely want to check this book out.

Having a very busy week... but going somewhere outside today for at least a few hours to enjoy the nice weather.

Casimir Pulaski and the crisis of credit

2009-03-02T23:08:00.006-06:00

Kazimierz Pulaski, standing tall in DC, December '07

Kazimierz Pułaski, I give you thanks for your service, but especially for the day off of school that you have granted to CPS students. That makes the bus ride about ten minutes shorter and 500% more enjoyable.

In another vein, I became an Editor's Selection at the New York Times website this weekend. But before it went to my head, they promptly rejected another comment I wrote.

Making the rounds these days are various attempts to explain the economic crisis. This American Life gave it their all this weekend, and it was mildly amusing and moderately helpful. A few youtube videos, below, have also gone fairly viral:

I also went to the Music Now performance tonight with a classmate (and her students). As usual, it was fairly atonal, avant, etc. and some in the audience were not prepared. Before the last piece, a man behind me huffed "Here's hoping for a melody!" I was just like, "Don't hold your breath!"

What will we do when newspapers die?

2009-02-26T07:49:00.003-06:00

Who will answer the important questions? How much boiling water does pasta need? How do you make parsnip chips?

If you think I'm kidding, I'm not. Those were the most interesting things I read this week. That's why I get the Wednesday paper.

2,492

2009-02-24T20:34:00.002-06:00

I realized today that it had been about a year since I got my bicycle odometer to start working. The brain works in mysterious ways, because it had been exactly a year to the day, yesterday.

In this case, the ways aren't so mysterious because my OCD self had been keeping a spreadsheet with the miles ridden per week, although since winter came I hadn't updated it that often and so hadn't updated it in weeks.

But all I really wanted to say was that in a year and a day, I've ridden 2,492 miles. Yippee!

Compared to certain roommates, exes, critical mass denizens, and hard-core racing cyclists (like the one who works out in the UIC gym in his lycra shorts - please, if you're reading, stop that) that's a small number. But compared to George W. Bush, who only cycled an estimated 5,400 miles in his eight-year presidency, it's a large number.

I also have to admit to sort of beaming when I picked up my bike from the shop last week and they said "We get two kinds of commuter bikes - pristine ones and ones that are used to death. This one took a little extra TLC." All I could say was, after having to blame the CTA for the forty-eighth time for your tardiness, you start to bike everywhere.

Yeah, this was a "Aren't I swell?" post.

Sadly, there is no bicycle cake on Cake Wrecks. So no visual.

The end is, more or less, nigh

2009-02-21T09:39:00.003-06:00

538 reports that beer sales have had an unprecedented drop (h/t to Urbanist). Just a month or two ago I heard a story on NPR claiming the exact opposite - that people were cutting back on going to bars to get more bang from their buck at liquor stores, which were booming. But now even the sale of "alcohol purchased for home consumption" has plummeted.

Future mommies

2009-02-17T21:56:00.003-06:00

This blog has recently gone really gay, but I have to pass this along to anyone who hasn't seen it. It has brought more than one person I know to tears!

However, some caveats:

1. Although I signed the petition, I don't think it's likely to be an effective tactic, nor do I even support the idea in the abstract. Courts are supposed to rule based on the letter of the law and not be swayed by perceived public opinion or political expediency.

2. WHERE WAS THIS VIDEO WHEN IT COULD HAVE MATTERED? YOO HOO?

3. If two people were partnered for 40+ years, they are not going to divorce just because their marriage license is no longer valid. They will simply revert to how they were the previous 39 years, which in CA means domestic partnership with nearly all (maybe all?) rights of marriage. As Joni Mitchell sang, "We don’t need no piece of paper/ From the city hall / Keeping us tied and true."

Coming up for air, or another day at the zoo.

2009-02-15T20:36:00.005-06:00

Pygmy hippo

Poor giraffe - too cold to go outside today!

It's easy being green.

FYI

2009-02-13T16:04:00.003-06:00

For your taxonomic needs: the "Basic Gay":

Found in "Gay Semiotics" (1977), which yes, will be available in the U of C collections in about a week.

Lincoln logs!

2009-02-12T16:14:00.002-06:00

Too easy. Way too easy.

New penny designs here.

$18,000

2009-02-11T20:24:00.002-06:00

Quick, what's $18,000? My salary?

HAHAHA LOL ROFL ROFLMAO and all other laughing acronyms. I wish.

No, it's how much money I spent on Iranian DVD's today at work, right before I spent about $3,000 buying compelete topographic map sets of Uruguay, Chile, the Philippines, and Peru.

Weird job, huh?

0°-60° in a week

2009-02-08T11:00:00.006-06:00

Yesterday Chicago broke out of its spine-chilling winter with a 60° degree day. It was a great day for advertising a long-lost political race:

And advertising who knows what by way of graffiti:

This picture from the first day of school was taken in chillier conditions. In fact, it may have been one of our negative temperature days. Brr and good riddance!

Hallelujah

2009-01-30T16:40:00.002-06:00

My roommate would be in a frenzy of ecstasy if she came home to see a mound of butter like this. Unfortunately, the only version she'll get to see is the cartoon version by Maira Kalman of NYT.

Bye-bye Blago

2009-01-29T22:26:00.002-06:00

But thank you for this bizarre, racist-ish radio ad:

Breathtaking bureaucracy

2009-01-22T15:18:00.002-06:00

I decided to audit a class instead of taking it for credit. This should help my sanity some, but what did NOT help my sanity any were these conversations from today as I tried to get the needed signatures of the form:

On 3rd floor [after 15 minutes]:
Me: I have this audit form to sign.
Them: You have to go to the 6th floor.

On 6th floor [after 5-10 minutes]
Me: I have this audit form to sign.
Them: You have to go to the 3rd floor
Me: Whaa???

Have fun!

2009-01-21T20:15:00.004-06:00

Yeah, I'm sure it will be "fun." But what can you say? Nothing, but you can listen:

January 20, 2009

2009-01-20T07:00:00.000-06:00

Two speeches, one dance.

On why I decided not to go the PhD route

2009-01-19T11:10:00.004-06:00

Becoming a professor in the humanities, or most likely any social science bar economics or hard science bar medicine and energy-related fields is is likely a thing of the past, according to Stanley Fish's latest post The Last Professor. Of course there will still be professors, but most will not live the professorial lives of the past. Some departments will disappear and the number of positions will dwindle in others in a way that makes competition fierce and life extremely unpleasant (i.e. the need to publish whether you have anything to say or not, or whether you would prefer to focus on teaching). Needless to say, it's depressing.

Er, there's nothing wrong with technical education, vocational education, pre-professional education, etc. Of course we need people trained in practical fields to build bridges, care for the sick, administer the legal process, and do many other functions. And we should not necessarily incentivize fields with no career prospects. But the rate of technological change is such that narrowly job-tailored education may not be relevant within a few years anyway, so there's nothing wrong with teaching people mostly how to think rigorously (whatever the subject matter). There's also the idea that trying in a top-down way to steer research and teaching into practical applications or solving specific problems can obscure the very solutions to those problems. Solutions can come from surprising places and it's very difficult to predict what the technological follow-through will be from findings in pure research.

The last two books I ever read

2009-01-17T14:35:00.002-06:00

Last week, I started four classes, three quite reading intensive, so the chance more pleasure-reading (or pleasure-anything) is about to plummet. So just a quick shout-out to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and A Brief History of the Dead, both of which I heartily endorse. I got the former of a shelf at my parents' house and the latter at the library after hearing a segment on To the Best of Our Knowledge, which I also heartily endorse.

And speaking of hearty endorsements, the most raucous Talk of the Nation segment ever and Paul Krugman's recent column, both on indicting our current president.

Mwa ha ha, enjoy.

2009-01-17T14:22:00.003-06:00

OK, if you have a lot of time (like, 17 minutes):

I may have linked to Julia's show almost two years ago, but this has a different story in the first eight minutes. I love her delivery and her humor, it just makes me smile. It won't say what happens around nine minutes in...

This one's for you, Natalia :)

Latest batch...

2009-01-15T09:25:00.003-06:00

Here are a few of the latest scans of new and "pre-owned" books added to the library collections. First, a very important history:

These two are illustrations from the book The World in 2030 AD by "The Earl of Birkenhead", which is catalogued helpfully as "Procephies." The book has eight very snazzy modernist prints in it, including The Woman in 2030 and Industry in 2030:

And here are two Mexican pamphlets, that translate to "Does there exist a Jewish race?" and "Man the the sacred." The second one, however, looks to me more like "Woman and multi-headed chickens."

Modern Music

2009-01-13T19:40:00.003-06:00

Last night I used the allure of free pizza (Edwardo's) and beer (Sierra Nevada) to drag a few friends to the CSO's New Music series, MusicNOW. I was thrilled that they enjoyed the beer, because they didn't really enjoy the music, and who could blame them? Several musics of plugged trumpet noises that sounded like dying poultry (brutally tortured dying poultry, actually). Sorry! It reminded me of this overheard conversation:

Guy: ''Well, there's no chance I'll have THAT music stuck in my head for the next three days.''

Girl: ''It's modern opera - it is what it is.''

Guy: ''Yeah. What it is, is sucky.''

Snowing!

2009-01-10T12:33:00.005-06:00

There's no ride to Indiana today... why? It's been snowing since yesterday afternoon. Very lightly, but without end. This photo is from yesterday, on the UIC campus:

Late last night, 3500 block of Emerald. Full disclosure - it took a LOT of iPhoto editing to find any image in the very black picture. PEOPLE, THE HOLDAY SEASON IS OVER!:

Why I didn't ride... didn't want to end up like this guy (My photo, Ian Bennett's artwork):

Happy wintry weekend, folks.

(P.S.: Finished Omnivore's Dilemma. Terrific description of industrial food system, the joys of hunting and foraging, the lushness of very good meals, and a brilliant discussion of the issues of eating animals at all and under what conditions. A very tedious middle section about life on a well-run farm. I get it. It's a cycle. Very worth reading, even if you want to breeze through a chapter or two.)

Garam Masala in HP!

2009-01-08T18:28:00.007-06:00

Hello, Open Produce. Thank you, HPP for the update and photo (above). Oh my goodness, that is really turmeric, Madras curry, and garam masala on the top shelf... a primary reason I went to Devon last week, and it was in Hyde Park the whole time.

In other news, school starts again on Monday. I thought it started the 20th for some reason, but alas no. So I signed up for classes today - Monday in the afternoon, Tuesday to Thursday from 5-8. I complained about this, and then learned that my roommate is taking something like 30 hours of classes this term at cooking school (difference: no homework to speak of). Still.

I hate to admit it, but I didn't leave the house today. Instead, I read much of the Omnivore's Dilemma (as well as this Michael Pollan article), cooked lunch for the next several days, took a nap, watched the end of Japón, and obviously, but the type of websurfing that led to this. Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive.

And Gaza, Yikes, So upsetting I can't even begin, and definitely shouldn't.

In the cards for Saturday, if I don't chicken out (which is VERY possible): ride to 3 Floyd's.

Lastly, Alien vs. Predator!

They paid the bills!

2009-01-06T20:31:00.004-06:00

Now fully lit:

Of course, it's already many days past Christmas, so it seems like a bit of a waste.

Histoire du Snobisme, or books books books

2009-01-03T20:02:00.000-06:00

The Histoire du Snobisme was one of only eight gazillion books that crossed my desk at work that I would have loved to thumb through, if only I could read more than the title. In general, due to certain logistical matters and the hiring of a co-worker that really speaks Russian and doesn't just fake it, my workload has steadily shifted into books in French and (especially) German. Some of those books are fascinating, if I allow myself to judge books by their covers. For example, Africa, a gorgeous photo book by the publishers of oversized but often reasonably priced art books, Taschen. Yet who in their right minds would have the complete lack of shame required to put a gigantic book of mostly naked or scantily clad Africans on their coffee table, whatever the brilliance of the landscapes, colors, and composition of the photographs? It's in the early 20th century Natural Geographic aesthetic, but on steroids and brought to you by the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Basically, it's the definition of "fraught."

Speaking of fraught, this whole year has been quite fraught for booksellers and buyers. Reading a book has become, like eating (thank you, Michael Pollan), an extremely complicated set of weights to balance. Support the library in a time of lowered municipal budgets? Support the independent book seller (see comment)? Support your own budget by buying used? You hurt the author and the publisher. And that hurts books in general, as publishers stop accepting manuscripts. And in a culture that can produce this card, perhaps this is all a little bit like rearranging deck chairs...

Onward. Here are some unsolicited recommendations, based on what I managed to read this year, mostly on my long summer and long winter breaks. Since I didn't spend quite as much time on vacation as the president, I don't have quite as extensive a list. But here are a few goodies, all books that I can recommend because I devoured them (I seem to have two reading habits - shoveling down handfuls of words and finishing a book in a day or two, or reading up to five or six books at the same time, painfully slowly).

Perhaps the best two books of social science I've ever read...
Tally's Corner, Elliot Liebow
Stigma, Erving Goffman

The problems with nearly all social sciences (excepting maybe economics) is that books and articles either seem to be based on an author's musings and therefore ungrounded, or based on a well developed and rigorous methodology and therefore boringly mathematical and extremely narrowly focused. These two books are pleasurable to read, based on voluminous observations, theoretically interesting and sound, but not very quantitative. They definitely show their age - Liebow's book feels the need to define what a network is, for example (it was one of the first books to suggest that informal social ties are as important as broad social categories like race, age, etc., although the mathematics of network theory were much too undeveloped to apply this insight in any real way)

Books on the War on Terror, pre and post 9/11
The Dark Side, Jane Meyer
The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright

The Dark Side was the most fascinating and disturbing book I read this year, without a doubt. Although in her interviews, Meyer insisted that the book was not only pessimistic but also a celebration of those who stood up against torture and the elimination of basic rights, the book reads mostly as a catalogue of horrors. It also documented to a large extent just how few people were involved in crafting a torture policy, mainly because the normal policy channels were subverted and those whose jobs were to oversee legality were kept out of the loop entirely. This is an important point, since it means that prosecuting the torturers and their enablers would not mean indicting an entire political class, but indicting a few key individuals.

The Looming Tower is the few-year old history of the 9/11 plot. I might have been a bit late in checking it out, but it was worth it. The intellectual history of Al-Queda was fascinating (even nihilistic nutjobs come from somewhere), the actual history of who what where when and how was equally fascinating. When the book came out, the problems of the intellegence agencies, especially the "wall" between the FBI and CIA, was considered the focus of this book, but it's actually the weakest part. Much more interesting is the connecting of the dots that Wright did to uncover the history of the plot to its horrible conclusion.

With Pictures! Yeah!
Nelson Mandela: The Authorized Comic Book - Umlando Wezithombe
Scottsboro, Alabama: A Story in Linoleum Cuts – Lin Shi Kan
Complete Maus - Art Spiegelmann

Comic books have definitely improved, becoming all high- (or at least middle-) brow, "graphic novels" like Persepolis, Fun Home, The Pride of Baghdad, The Sandman, etc. Two of the three best picture books I read came out before this development. In the case of Maus, it was instrumental in that development. For those who don't know, Maus is a telling of the author's father story of surviving the Holocaust, although at least as many pages recount the process of interviewing the father and writing the book itself, in a very meta- and occasionally aggravating way. It a very impressive showing of both love and disgust, told in pictures of cats (Germans), mice (Jews), pigs (Poles), and gypsy moths (Gypsies). The most ingenious use of animals has to be when the Jews are disguised as Poles - and wearing pig masks. Very creative.

In the same vein, the Nelson Mandela comic book crossed my desk a few months ago. Though it's currently only on sale in South Africa, it is coming our way. It was beautifully rendered and surprisingly thorough and informative, for example, explaining the years of internal debate on the used of arms, the values of socialism vs. nationalism and the investments some blacks had in the apartheid system (including a close relative of Mandela's, an apartheid-sanctioned "traditional ruler" of one of the "independent homelands"). It doesn't shy away from portraying tactical mistakes or the (limited) embrace of violent means by Mandela, which may surprise people. On the other hand, it is produced by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, so its not exactly a critical piece of work either.

Ths Scottsboro book was a really unusual find. This was a piece of propaganda put together by the Communist Party in the 1930's to advocate, primarily to African Americans, that the solution to Southern miscarriages of justice was not simply specific civil rights, but the toppling of the capitalist system. The book was made using stark black and white linoleum cuts and limited text, as the audience was expected to be poor and uneducated. I can not emphasize enough how starkly beautiful and powerful these pages are, even if their effectiveness is a thing of doubt - whether the booklet was ever actually published at all is unclear, a single copy was found in a closet somewhere, and the author/ graphic artist is unknown and possibly a pseudonym. Disclaimer: finding a propaganda piece beautiful doesn't mean that I believe that communism was the solution to civil rights issues. Really.

Who Killed The Bishop?
The Art of Political Murder, Francisco Goldman
Senselessness, Horacio Castallanos Moya

I don't read many thrillers or mysteries, but I loved, loved, loved Goldman's Art of Political Murder, which read largely as a police procedural followed by a legal thriller. Basically, in 1998, two days after the publication of a 1000+ page catalogue of human rights abuses by the Guatemalan army and security forces, the bishop in charge of the Catholic Church's Office of Human RIghts was murdered in his garage. Goldman tracks down a wild group of witnesses (homeless drunks that would sleep at the church), possible assailants, and a full intricate web of church, sexual, military, and international politics as the possibilities of who or why are fleshed out. There is some degree of justice meted out, but exactly where the plot began remains unproven

Castallanos Moya's short novel takes a look at this event through the fictional acount of a man working on the catalogue of horrors that was published right before the murder (the murder is noted on the last page of the novel). It's a strangely amusing book, as the main character tries to break through the otherwise horrific job by obsessing over the beauty of the witnesses' words, the pursuit of pretty girls, and the downing of a great deal of booze. And by the way, the man is an atheist whose employer is the church and possibly being stalked by hired killers.

And The Poets
Antipoems: How to Look Better and Feel Great - Nicanor Parra
Astonishments - Anna Kamienska

The Washington Post book world has a half hour weekly podcast that I listen to at work. Each week it ends with the poet's choice and from time to time, I'm moved to pick up the selection. That's the good part of working at a gigantic library :) These are two books I thoroughly enjoyed, although they are quite different. Parra is kind of a Chilean beatnik, a literary bomb-thrower who sounds a bit like Ginsburg and who shifts from pure nonsense to excoriating his government to celebrating his sexual prowess. Kamienska is almost the opposite, writing about more standard poetic themes (love, hope, history, nature, God, etc.) using extremely stripped down language, almost the essence of a poem which the reader needs to flesh out on their own. Unfortunately, the meat of this book was a cycle based on the Book of Job, which I've not the first clue about. I also read Leaves of Grass for the first time. It was the original version, which is about 300 pages shorter than the "Deathbed Version" I attempted to wade through once and gave up.

From Parra:

I don't believe in the peaceful way

I don't believe in the violent way

I'd like to believe

in something - but I don't

to believe means to believe in God

all I can do is shrug my shoulders

forgive me for being blunt

I don't even believe in the Milky Way

35 pounds, $51

2009-01-03T11:45:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I went to Devon to get some winter staples and ended the day down fifty-one dollars, but up one zebra! I also finished, in the course of a day and a half, In Defense of Food including on much of the bus and train trip up to Devon. There is something very right about that combination.

Helen Suzman

2009-01-01T18:55:00.005-06:00

(Photo: Daily Mail)

Helen Suzman died earlier today in Johannesburg, South Africa. Every article has a different epithet that her opponents used to describe her: NYTimes (whose article has changed significantly since this afternoon) notes she was called “the lady from Lithuania,” a “sickly humanist” and a “dangerous subversive.”

Suzman walked a very thin line by choosing to oppose apartheid from within the system. In the whites-only parliament, she advocated Black enfranchisement and for a variety of human rights and liberal causes. But she never advocated for the complete (violent or non-violent) overthrow of the government which put her in opposition to the more radical opponents of apartheid, most obviously the ANC. Basically, the ANC was a socialist organization and Helen Suzman wasn't a socialist. (After coming to power, the ANC has largely abandoned its socialist roots when faced with the difficulties of running the country, and by many measures poor Black South Africans are more numerous and more poor than ever. But that's a story for another day. If interested, check out Breyten Breytenbach on Democracy Now! here,)

Helen Suzman was a Jew, in case the name and the adorable photo didn't make that clear. Actually, a majority of the prominent white anti-apartheid activists in South Africa were Jewish, despite being a rather tiny portion of the white population (under 100,000 of several million). After the "feeling of betrayal" stemming from the Bernie Madoff fiasco, that's nice to remember.

Update [1/2/09]: It's no surprise that I can become a little obsessed, OCD, ADD, etc. when a subjrct strikes me and this has been no exception. Of note, I found a found a very beautiful piece, which becomes almost a meditation on death, in the South African news source IOL (thank you, Google) and a very long, very smart and very funny remembrance from the same source, including the following stories:

Marie van Zyl, of the lunatic right Kappie Kommando, wrote to Suzman protesting at her support for "heathens" and boasting that her people, the Voortrekkers, had done more for blacks than Suzman's people by bringing the Bible over the mountains to the interior. Suzman replied: "You say your people brought the Bible over the mountains and ask what mine did. They wrote it, my dear …"

Suzman used to tell the story of when she was returning from a holiday and she was placed at a breakfast table with other people. One woman peered at her, and then asked: "Don't I know you from somewhere?" As Suzman readied herself to hear a diatribe against communists or black-lovers, the woman added: "Aren't you Helen Gavronsky?"

"I tell this story to stop politicians getting too blown up with their own importance," she said, "for I admitted that I was indeed Helen Gavronsky, my maiden name. The woman then said we had been at school together, before adding: 'So what have you been doing with your life?'"

2009-01-01T13:18:00.002-06:00

There are so many things wrong with this ad for GoldenRod, that I had to share it. Enjoy your 2009, G-Rod!

Happy 2009 from the stone

2008-12-31T13:22:00.007-06:00

(From one of my great new finds, though it's not that new and maybe not that great: Someecards)

If you need a stiff drink to bear going out to any final holiday season parties tonight, take pleasure in songs written just for you, courtesy of "Jim's Big Ego." The first song on the list, I Don't Know How to Party, pretty much sums it up. The other song "Sleepwalkers" has some great lines about the media-and-gadget obsessed zombies among us too; it's worth a listen.

I was planning on going to a party at somebody's who was "in between a friend of a friend and a friend," but then I looked at the invite again and it wasn't at her place but at her friend's place, and that's too many degrees of separation. Plus, the location wasn't Evanston (a hike, but doable) but Morton Grove (not doable). So I'll be tagging only with a co-worker on her hopefully mild-ish shenanigans this evening, at a party hosted by someone she also called "in between a friend of a friend and a friend." One goal is not to repeat the epic 12-hour party of last year. Other than that, I have no expectations and make no promises.

At this end of 2008, I'd like to leave you with a little link to a ridiculous story about the Dewey Decimal System. And to the priceless response.

A sad Chicago holiday display

2008-12-30T19:36:00.006-06:00

Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law profession now heading up the oversight committee for the $700 billion bailout, said on Fresh Air recently that "Happy Holidays are holidays that have been paid for in full before you start unwrapping the gifts." I don't think Chicago got the memo, because it seems the lights were turned out for half the collonade. It would still be weird and ugly with the full light display, but still.

A Lonely Love (Or Begrudging Admiration) for Rick Warren

2008-12-29T17:31:00.000-06:00

Frank Rich's columns are usually so smart, so well-researched, so full of zingers, and generally in support or intelligent criticism of my world-view that in the run-up to the election they were one source I always read in the midst of the punditry avalanche. But I have to say, this week's column You're Likable Enough Gay People, which got the most comments of any article I've ever seen on NYTimes.com (1003 and counting), is completely wrong. According to Rich, and it appears, most of my friends, Barack Obama has committed a great offense in offering the invocation at his inaugural swearing-in to Rick Warren, an evangelical pastor whose church hosted a forum with Obama and McCain earlier this year. It seems that Rick Warren's attitude toward gay marriage is pretty much what one would expect from an evangelical pastor. And that is driving the professionally gay crazy.

I can not bring myself to care. Why? This comment pretty much sums it up for me:

I've been an advocate of gay marriage for 20 years but the behavior and uproar of the gay community has turned me against them and their causes the way no right-winger or religious nutjob could ever do.

How dare they make this inauguration all about them! Warren has said equally horrible things about the pro-choice community but you don't see us demanding he be scalped. That's because we're focused on the policy.

Gays have only themselves to blame for the passage of Prop 8. They did ZERO outreach to the black and latino communities. They were so arrogant that they did not mount a proper opposition to Prop 8. When it passed they started looking for people to blame--stalking donors to Prop 8 and castigating blacks.

The more the gay community rants and attacks their allies, the more they will harm their cause. Calling Obama a bigot, homophobe and traitor (as many have) doesn't make me want to storm the barricades against Prop 8. It might also make Obama drag his feet in getting around to those issues.

Let's face it. We are not the center of the universe. There are issues like global warming (where the entire world, as well as the Minnesota moose is at stake) and AIDS in Africa (tens of millions affected, millions saved by the policies of, gasp, President Bush) in which Rick Warren is on the right side and instrumental in moving people not already in the choir. Then there are issues like gay marriage, which is obviously just and moral, but hardly on the magnitude of the complex and enormous issues of war and peace, economic justice and environmental disaster. In fact, the most important aspect of the gay marriage issue - allowing gay partners access to health care - would be completely irrelevant if we had a just and universal health care system in this country.

What I did on my winter vacation

2008-12-28T09:48:00.004-06:00

This winter vacation was quite restful and mellow. Days of snow marred any true adventuring, and I did not live up to my reputation as an early riser, either. I only took one photo, below, which was pretty much where and in what position I spent my winter vacation. I also visited the Mapparium, did emergency holiday shopping, ate like a pig, saw several people from high school, read a couple books, and went on two walks in the woods.

I got back, unpacked a few things, and went immediately to... another holiday party with an enormous and sinful spread. A few hours later I tottered home to realize this morning that the only real plan I had for the whole day, to go to the gym, was impossible since it will be closed until January 4th. I might break out the bike for the first time since before Thanksgiving (I know, I know) since it is brisk, but sunny and fairly reasonable outside. But really I don't have much to do today.

The picture of bunching

2008-12-16T16:26:00.004-06:00

It's a good thing I looked at ctabustracker.com today before leaving work. Why? Because I found a 28-minute wait for the bus in a snowstorm! Why? Look:

That's FIVE #55's in the space of a couple blocks, and one a few blocks behind them. It's not 100% clear in this shot, but they are all going Westbound.

But hey, at least I had bustracker to look at, so I wasn't in the cold for half an hour!

Top tens, and other random update

2008-12-14T08:59:00.007-06:00

It's that time of year - time for the avalanche of "Best of 2008" lists. There's the usual New York Times list, as well as this compilation of many, many lists. A few years ago, I made a list myself, and did it again last year. I plan to do the same this year. Is it a vain and/or self-aggrandizing exercise? Perhaps, but I at least don't plan to publish it and expect people to read it, like Nick Hornby did in The Polysyllabic Spree. But I really can't snark much... after all, I read it (and enjoyed it, and even used a few of the chapters as reading lists).

One thing all these top-ten lists are NOT doing is helping with holiday shopping. I've bought a few books for me, added dozens of books - and CD's, after all there are music lists too - to my now-$1000+ amazon wish list. I went to the Facets sale as I mentioned earlier and got two tapes - for me. I heard about a book on NPR and patron-requested it - for me. I read about a CD in the Tribune and, well, you get the point.

In another vein, a random update. I went to the same twice-yearly party I went to in the summer of 2007 (check out this navel-gazing post). The hosts are two very wealthy, "pillars-of-the-community" types who have been partnered for fifty years, and hold holiday and summer bashes every year in their immaculate Hyde Park town home. The spread was ridiculous, as always, including a table of desserts too decadent to describe. The blind dog did not make an appearance, but the same as last time, I spent a long time oohing and aahing at the record collection and the cookbook collection - shelves and shelves and shelves of cookbooks. How many cookbooks could one possibly need? Really. I also had another run-in with war veterans full of stories from Korea. But unlike last year, this one wasn't bordering on senile and was actually hilarious. Also, he was proud to show himself of the cover of the new Out and Proud in Chicago in his fetching sailor uniform.

In national news, the Iraq Papers? Wow. Maybe it's time to stop writing "secret" histories. Or brazenly talking on the telephone.

[Update: I forgot one disturbing update about the youth of America. My roommate Natalia was at work at the MCA yesterday, trying to add to her massive reading list, but sadly inundated with children's coats - it was Family Day. When I came home and she told me about her day, she mentioned the "killer children." I figured this was a figure of speech until she explained, no, really, a co-worker had overheard/been told that a chlld had stabbed the family cat to death with scissors and still was rewarded with a trip to the museum. Umm, let's hope that the co-worker misheard that one!!!]

Pumpkin donut vs. 10 hours of Polish cinema

2008-12-14T08:04:00.004-06:00

Yesterday I went to the Facets Cinametheque warehouse sale (Chicagoans: It is happening again next Saturday, with new material). It was full of great and obscure movies despite the disorganization and the awkward set-up in a hallway. Many movies were foreign and/or artsy, but there were also rather bizarre choices like an algebra video or a few old Nova episodes. The DVDs were on sale, but still not great deals, however the VHS tapes were mostly 99¢ each.

Soon I realized that I only had seven dollars on my and they weren't taking credit cards. I had found two decent tapes, Japón and Brigands-Chapter VII. The latter movie I bought largely for the chance to hear Georgian, a language I don't recall ever hearing.

Then I stumbled across the Decalogue - all ten hours of critically acclaimed, award-winning Polish teledrama. The whole set was $4.99. This was a terrific deal, even on VHS. But my stomach was grumbling - I hadn't eaten yet all day and I had a caffeine-deficit headache. It seemed to be pumpkin donut and coffee vs. the Decalogue, and the coffee and donut won.

Only just now do I realize that I could have bought it and then went to Dunkin and paid with a credit card.

I guess I didn't want the Polish teledramas as much as I wanted to want them, or thought it would like nice on our shelves. There's an honest thought.

The Holiday Party email

2008-12-13T08:31:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, I had NOTHING to do. I could have gone into work for the Holiday Party. But I have an allergy to going into work for free, even if it's to a party... and recently I got the horrifying e-mail "Due to the economic downturn, our Holiday Party will be scaled back and now consist of a baking contest. No entries = No Desserts." Well no more free booze and catered noshes, no more Holiday Party for Michael. That and my dearest co-worker gal pal wasn't even in the state.

So instead I did a few useful (grocery shopping, thinking about doing laundry) and a few less useful (Chinese bun eating, train riding/ people watching) things. I will spare you all the details.

It's called getting dumped

2008-12-12T15:49:00.001-06:00

Overheard on the train today (into phone):

I just got out of a relationship with someone... or they just got out of a relationship with me, whatever you want to call it...

L'dor v'dor

2008-12-11T17:49:00.004-06:00

Dr. Elliot Judd died Tuesday. I went to his funeral today and it was amazing how many people were there and how many good things people had to say. He cared deeply about teaching and the process of education, and managed to teach his final class on last Thursday. I learned at the funeral that although he put on a great game face, arriving to class these final weeks was tremendously difficult and wore him out completely. He taught both me and the teacher that I worked under this semester, as I learned an immense amount by observing and being observed in a real classroom. Sadly, Elliot was unable to observe me this semester as planned, as his health already had started to suffer.

Elliot had a fierce, penetrating intellect that he often hid under a casual and goofy demeanor. He got riled up by stupid misuse of language, but always in a good-natured way. Once he came to class excited to tell us about how a losing candidate for Cook County State's Attorney had used "respectful" instead of "respectable." When I noticed that the Chicago Tribute had fixed the quote by changing the word, I emailed the article to him and pointed it out. He emailed me back the next morning to tell me, "At least the Tribune has sense to cover it up since, I believe, they endorsed him!"

In his lectures, Dr. Judd focused on practical applications for the classroom. But it was obvious that he knew all the theoretical developments in the field as well. Yet as others have noted, he had that unique ability for an academic - the ability to cut through the garbage. Referring to something I don't recall, Dr. Judd once said, "Some people claim this is all really about Marx, or Freud, or feminism, and of course they're all correct. But..." And that seemed to be the position he taught from, acknowledging the messiness and the agendas and the theoretical problems found in the material, but first making sure that his students had an understanding of the basic ideas of the material at their face value - material that his students would soon have to use in their own classrooms.

As I waited shivering in line behind former students of his, including my mentor teacher for this last semester just before me, to add earth to his grave, I saw a vivid picture of the generational flow of wisdom. Hopefully, the buck doesn't stop here.

You know what, talking about yourself too much when someone dies is a little messed up, so check out the remembrances here.

2 weeks, 2 articles

2008-12-05T21:29:00.003-06:00

The two weeks that I was away included a moderate break in Internet surfing. Moderate. It also included some daily dead-tree paper reading. The most interesting article to come out of that was this one, in which a small-ish city's housing authority opens up an important benefit to low-income same-sex couples without the hullabaloo surrounding Prop 8 or similar campaigns. It's not very democratic, but maybe that's how change happens: small groups of people making practical decisions (of course, the smoke-filled room paradigm of change has problems, too.)

And in regards to my recent bus adventure, this scary article.

Bagels

2008-12-05T09:12:00.003-06:00

It is indeed possible to make bagels from scratch.

It is not only possible but easy and fun.

Genocide, Torture, or read the freaking book!

2008-12-05T08:00:00.001-06:00

Last night, I watched the CNN special Scream Bloody Murder with my mother. While Christiane Amanpour, with her goofy hair and beautiful accent, did a good job and brought up stories that don't get a lot of airplay anymore (Darfur), I still left feeling that after two hours she barely scratched the surface. Besides that, she had this annoying habit of showing footage of herself surrounded by carnage or asking presidents questions, as though she was the only reporter ever to do so.

The part that was really left out was the alternative path that she thought the world should have taken in each of the genocides highlighted. Interviewing a top official in the Reagan administration, which continued to support Saddam Hussein before, during, and after intense gas attacks on Kurdish areas, Amanpour asked [paraphrased] "Isn't there a place for morality in foreign policy, for doing what's right regardless of national interest or effectiveness?" The interview subject basically just said "no," and this was played as a gotcha moment, even though the answer must have been correct - if some policy is ineffective, then it's not "what's right" and if a policy is immoral then it shouldn't be "in the national interest" or our definition of national interest is severely messed up.

Basically, I had the same reaction to this documentary that I had to Taxi to the Dark Side. Interesting ideas, too bad they were so cursorily examined. Each documentary seemed a shorter, simplified version of a book. CNN's special more or less followed Samantha Power's A Problem from Hell, even following the same characters (Raphael Lemkin, Peter Galbraith) and genocides (Kurdistan but not Guatemala, the Bosnian war but not the Soviet population transfers). Taxi to the Dark Side struck me as a poor substitute for Jane Meyer's devastating book The Dark Side. In both cases, read the freaking book. Both are long, but both are fascinating and easy to devour with loads of intriguing, heroic, and nefarious characters.

Speaking of genocide (not a phrase I'd like to use much), I found these pictures in a book on Macedonia that I processed a while back. At the time, I found them amusing, but they could also be considered disturbing.

In this picture, The Statue of Liberty keeps watch over Macedonia (at her base, in Macedonian, is written "Freedom and Unity of Macedonia"). Besides elevating a petty nationalist land struggle to the level of universal liberty, the picture is also interesting because Macedonia is a landlocked country, and Lady Liberty is overlooking a harbor. This can only mean one thing: that she is blessing a land grab.

If that didn't make it clear, a few pages later shows one bizarre map of Macedonia. What happened to half of Greece?

Amanpour didn't discuss the psychology of of mass atrocity much (although there was a bizarre and hackneyed reunion of a woman and her family's killer at the very end of the special). However, Charles Simic in his essay The Renegade (itself in the highly disappointing Best American Essays 2008) writes:

"We don't want to live with them anymore" friends would tell me, speaking of Croats and Bosnians [...] When I pointed this [that it couldn't be done without extreme violence] out to them, they got very upset because they were decent people who didn't believe in violence. "How can you separate yourselves when you are all mixed together?" I would ask and not get a straight answer. Of course, I was naive. I didn't realize the immense prestige that inhumanity and violence have among nationalists. I also didn't grasp to what degree they were impervious to reason. They refused to believe in cause and effect.

Someone has a sick sense of humor

2008-12-04T09:09:00.004-06:00

I went to a Reading Royals hockey game last night. There was so much bizarreness that I don't even know where to start. First off, the Royals are terrible. They lost to the powerhouse Johnstown Chiefs 2-1. Not bad, except the only goal they scored was on a two-man advantage.

Back to the bizarreness. If David Foster Wallace was looking for a subject to come back from the grave for, this one was it. There was the man wearing a chicken on his head (note: neither team had anything to do with poultry, unlike the Toledo Mud Hens hat I had on my head). There was the obese woman who decided to tell my father and I about her tingly legs for no reason. There was the comically off announced attendance of 3,551, when actually the attendance was closer to 1,500. And with the low attendance came the ridiculously amped-up music, as though no one would realize the empty seats if it sounded loud. Then there was the man from down the street who had heard I was engaged. And the man who was clearly drunk and riled up and acting like he was watching the Super Bowl, not a third-division regular-season poorly-attended hockey match.

Early in the second period there was a quality fight between a Royal and a Chief. The Royal knocked off the Chief's helmet and out came flowing shoulder-length locks and a bushy, unkempt beard. As the players made their way to the penalty boxes, what came on the public address system? The deafening roar of Aerosmith's Dude Looks Like a Lady. ROTF of the arena L!!! Then the drunken man began yelling "Ahoy!" every time this particular Chief touched the puck.

And more on the sick humor front. The local florist Heck Bros. - not the joke, although a funny name - sponsors the Royals. It has painted the opposing team's bench with the slogan World's Biggest Pansies. The Johnstown player had strategically draped same jerseys and towels on the bench making the slogan hard to decipher, but it didn't work.

DC Photos

2008-12-02T08:58:00.000-06:00

Things are ducky here! I'm seeing the light. (Photo by me!)

I'm having a grand old time at my parents' house in PA. Playing Scrabble, running (including a solid hour-plus run with the lovely pooch on the left of the screen), reading, fireplace-tending, baking cookies. But very little Internet perusing, as we are waiting with bated breath for the Verizon wo/man to come set up high-speed Internet. Nothing keeps people off the Internet more than dial-up, so I've only been on two or three days in the last ten days.

I did upload a number of photos from the first few days of my trip, when I was visiting my sister in Washington, DC. Check them out if you'd like! There are several of ducks, and several of buildings. Pretty exciting!

And now I wait. What was that about coming shortly after 8? It's now 9. Hello?!

Out of town and smelling like chlorine

2008-11-23T15:12:00.005-06:00

I'm skipping town for two weeks tomorrow morning, but I'm packing and heading over to a friend's place tonight. I'm going on an extended Thanksgiving holiday with the family, becuase my internship (student teaching) is over, and so I can.

This blog may or may not take a two-week break. On the one hand, I may run out of stuff to do. But on the other hand, not trolling the internet may be exactly the break I need.

I started my vacation today with some time in the hot tub at UIC. Sadly, when I went to shower afterwards the water was so cold I couldn't stay in, so I smell seriously like chlorine.

Hopefully I will have some more sucessful R & R during my vacation.

I was going to upload some pics, but I seem to have run out of time... Mickey Mouse in holiday attire will have to wait!

CTA and biking FAIL

2008-11-22T14:59:00.001-06:00

(From an old Failblog post: life on the edge)

Time for a shorter rant: Michael's transportation blues. These things all happened in the last week or so.

1. A pissing match: I got on the bus. The bus went a couple blocks, then sat there for ten minutes. I finally asked the driver what was happening, and it turned out that a young woman had gotten on and refused to pay. "I ain't going move til you pay your fare," said the driver to the young woman. "I can sit here all day!"

Well, maybe she could, but I couldn't. It also wasn't "day" - it was 8:30 PM and nightfall is happening around 4:15 these days. I wanted to go home! So I tapped my Chicago Card to pay for the young woman and the bus started moving.

That's when it got ugly:

Bus driver: You making us look bad. You made that white man pay for you. You're disgusting! [Note: I may be 25, but being referred to as a "man" always makes me giggle. A "boy" would be worse, but the indeterminate "dude" or "guy" goes down best of all.]

Young woman: If I'm disgusting so are you. You're one of us and don't you forget it!

Can someone say uncomfortable?!?

2, Swiping a card for no reason: When I sit down at public computer, I always have this confusion? Where am I, UIC, U of C, somewhere else? The password and user name are different and I often type the wrong one over and over.

The same sort of thing happened today at the train station. To enter the library, I just tap my wallet, but to enter the train station I need to swipe my U-Pass. However, I tapped my wallet, which worked - but cost me $1.75 (for non-Chicagoans, that might be confusing).

3. CTA fares to increase: $2.25 - because that's a convenient fare. Jeez.

4. Bus driver no-show: I hopped on a #10 bus to Hyde Park to pick up my bike this afternoon, and in one block it stopped. And stopped. And stopped. Why? It appears that it was time for a shift change, but the other driver never showed up. There was a lot of radioing, and after a good 15 minutes (yes, I could've gotten out and used another bus or train, but I was lazy), the bus continued WITH THE SAME DRIVER. Huh? I thought his shift was over.

5. Chicagoland Bicycle Federation becomes Active Transportation Alliance: If you don't think this caused a lot of reaction, check this indexical blog entry out (and this Trib article featuring one Eric Rogers). Also, check out the ugly, boring new logo.

6. Laziness - Despite a temperature of around 25 degrees, I was too lazy to get my gloves and earmuffs out of my backpack before hopping on just an hour or so ago, Fifteen minutes later, I nearly had frostbite [OK, probably not] and had fire engine red ears to show for it. That was a fail.

Big Chef is back...

2008-11-22T14:57:00.001-06:00

Loyal readers may remember two mouth-watering posts featuring my favorite thing on Earth - warm bread. Unfortunately, the creator of all those loafs had trailed off in her blogging. Although this gave my salivary glands a much-needed break, I missed the temptation. Well, she's back with a re-designed Big Chef's Gallery of Food and a web-store of uproarously funny t-shirts (example: above). Mmmmm.

Speaking of food, here's a Thanksgiving cake wreck for y'all: