An Evening with David Byrne

Last week I saw David Byrne perform at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. It was perhaps one of the best concerts that I have been to in my life. Byrne recently released a new album with long-time collaborator, Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

The present tour is meant to promote this new album (his first since 2004), but the setlist included songs from other collaborations with Brian Eno as well as familiar Talking Heads standards. The live performance of Help Me Somebody (from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts) was particularly remarkable. David commented on how the voices they used for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts were originally called "found vocals," but now are commonly referred to as samples. In this song the lyrics were provided by a track of an evangelical preacher. Since, for a concert, playing a recording would have been uninteresting, and the original interlocutor is probably not available, David sang the emotionally-charged, rhythmic sermon himself. In a word, incredible.

Also incorporated into the concert were the customary back-up vocalists and also three very conceptual dancers. I think that these artists actually made the most significant contribution to the vibrancy and vividness of the night. Frequently, their movements were visually disjointed or even somewhat nonsensical, but so in many ways is David Byrne's music. By the end of the show I was able to make more sense of how the two artistries were interrelated. A segment with the dancers simply lounging in swiveling office chairs was almost mesmerizing.

There were a few irregularities in an overall brilliant performance: the vibe of the concert was not consistently energized and the space was cramped and kind of weird (the Michigan Theater mostly plays movies). I think there was a significant number of people who were there for only Talking Heads and didn't care for the new stuff (some of which is my favorite). But by the end of the concert people were mostly up and about and dancing. It was pretty cool to see a wide range of ages of fans of David Byrne. The elevated median age probably accounted for some of the uneven energy, but I think that this was superseded by the fact that this demographic diversity testifies to the longevity of the musician and his music.

Considering that David Byrne probably won't be touring much more in the future, this was a pretty poignant and memorable experience for me.

Chopping Mall

What happens when four teenagers break into their local shopping mall for the wildest all-night party of their lives? If it's on the same night the mall's brand new robotic security system goes haywire, I think we all know the answer: 80's horror antics ensue and heads get exploded by lasers.

Carol, one of my students from last year turned me onto Chopping Mall during one of our numerous discussions about the impending robot apocalypse.

Happy Halloween!

Carbon Offsets

Image from businesstravellogue.com

Carbon offsets seem to be all the rage these days. But the business behind them and their impact on environmentalism is disheartening.

Where does the money for your offset go, you ask? Some goes into reforestation but The Sierra Club questions the benefit of that. Often the money goes into the development of renewable energy production but someone else makes money off of that. There is even fraudulent activity where companies just pocket your carbon offset money or double sell carbon offsetting endeavors. Perhaps the answer is investment in green technology ala T. Boone Pickens. Put your money towards energy efficient light bulbs, solar panels or even locally grown produce.

Besides the aforementioned misgivings over carbon offsets, my main concern is that the whole concept behind them is misguided. Carbon offsets allow us to pay our way out of responsibility. The importance of environmental stewardship is ignored. To make any sustained environmental impact we must change our lifestyles, not just our spending habits.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Terrorists

During my two years teaching in Chicago, I lived in Hyde Park with two now infamous terrorists. Of course, I'm referring to the terrorist Barack Obama and the terrorist Bill Ayers. Trust me when I say this my friends, it was scary living in such close proximity to people who hate America so much.

But seriously, let's talk about the real Bill Ayers. Now, I've never actually met Ayers, but I do feel a certain kinship for him: we have both been radical leaning urban educators, and I bet we've both shopped at Hyde Park Produce. My friend Kathleen Tieri of teaching wide-awake knows him a little better: Ayers is her Ph.D. adviser at UIC. She assures me that they have never discussed techniques for clandestine explosive manufacture.

The right has attempted to vilify Ayers in order to paint Obama as a terrorist. The left has largely refuted those claims. Both sides though, miss the larger significance of Ayers. Not in terms of the current election (he has already played far too large of a role here), but in terms of education. Ayers is an expert on urban education and a passionate advocate for teaching social justice through education. It is unfortunate that neither campaign has really mentioned Ayers in terms of what his thoughts on how to improve public education in the US.

If you want a chance to form your own opinion about the terrorist Ayers, you can check out his blog, this article from Monday's NYTimes, or heck, just watch the video:

Time Management For Anarchists

Time Management for Anarchists is an interesting project. It started as Jim Munroe's seminar on how to throw off the chains of wage-slavery while maintaining a high level of productivity.

In 2005 it became Time Management for Anarchists: The Movie. Really more of a slide show starring Emma Goldman and Mikhail Bakunin, TMfA: The Movie was released under a Creative Commons license which allows anyone to modify (improve) Munroe's original flash file, or to make new works based on it. It's only about 8 minutes long, and has some practical tips for increasing productivity, while maximizing enjoyment of life.

Now TMfA has morphed once again. Munroe teamed up with Marc Ngui to make a comic book adaptation of the seminar. The 22-page comic book is available for free download. It's a good read, so check it out.

Wassup 2008

Food, Glorious Food

Proportion of McDonald's per capita, 2004

Si El Norte Fuera El Sur
El Norte y sus McDonald´s, basketball y rock ´n roll,
Sus topless, sus Madonas y el abdomen de Stallone
Intelectuales de bronceado, eruditos de supermercado tienen todo pero nada lo han pagado. …
Ricardo Arjona

A fantastic meal of fried chicken, purchased at a Guatemalan fast food chain that has internationally expanded, inspires me to sustain the food-flavor of GAP.

Ben´s documentation of his dumpster diving coincides with the increasing intensity of focus on global food policy. ¨Food is not a commodity like others,¨ said Bill Clinton at the World Food Day Commemoration on October 24, urging leaders of the international community to support countries´ capacity to develop maximum agricultural self-sufficiency and recognize the link between food, energy and financial crises. Today, four days later, members of the UK Women´s Institute--founded in 1915 to encourage women to participate more in food production, now the UK´s largest voluntary women´s group-- joins for the first time Greenpeace´s Rainbow Warrior ship. The Rainbow Warrior will deliver a message to the Kent Kingsnorth coal power station asking the government to increase its efforts in the area of clean, renewable energy. This complements an intriguing campaign called Love Food Champions that facilitated discussion groups centered on strategies to reduce food waste through proper food storage, portion sizing and measuring tips. Across the pond, according to a 2004 study that built on archaeological dumpster diving in the U.S., household food waste totaled $43 billion. Commercial waste, of course, is a whole different dumpster.

Here in the outskirts of Quetzaltenango, in villages that bridge urban and rural, food and cooking classes act as a medium for socioeconomic empowerment. As Ronald McDonald chaperones Señorita Independencia on her Independence Day float, women turn over sweet bread dough and ideas.

Feeling hungry yet? Craving affection from R? Visit him virtually at WorldMapper. Note that the map, from 2004, does not take into account temporary fluctuations such as that in Venezuela this month.

The obligatory hipster article

What do hipsters love above all else? No it's not gentrification, or not self-identifying as hipsters. It's judging other hipsters. Let's be clear, there is nothing wrong with that. Hipsters live in a world of contradictions: they hate gentrification but love living in gritty, working class, "ethnic" neighborhoods. They wear clothes so unfashionable they are fashionable. Inhabiting societies great gray expanse, hipsters are easy targets for criticism and thankfully, not above leveling harsh judgments against each other. Personally, I'm not above taking a swing at this easy target.

How are Aussie hipsters different than your garden variety North American hipster? As it turns out, they're not. (Thanks for the link Jean!)

If you find you are having trouble identifying whether someone is a hipster or just a retired steel mill worker, try using this helpful flow chart:

Image credit: http://www.somethingawful.com

Also from Something Awful is the authoritative Field Guide to the North American Hipster, Volumes I, and II. With these guides, once you have identified a hipster, you can take it one step further and see if you've found a common "Twee Twit" or the elusive "Scene Legend".

If you are planning on drinking in Dolores Park any time soon, make sure you print out a copy of Hipster Bingo. It's pretty self explanatory. You can also adapt it to fit the character of your local hipsters.

Finally, there's yourscenesucks.com. In case you know, you just want to judge everyone.

Lessons in Dumpster Diving

You threw your babies away. And you threw your swords away. You threw your golf clubs and your tasty treats! And ya know what? I found 'em. And I'm gonna raise all of them! - Charlie Kelly, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 3, Episode 1

Dumpster diving has always held an allure for me. Maybe it tickles some hunter-gatherer reward circuit in my brain. Or maybe it's the rumor that perfectly good cases of wine can be found if you go to the right Trader Joe's at just right time. Regardless, there is substantial appeal to the thought of getting useful things for free while reducing landfill waste.

Though I'd felt the alluring pull of dumpster diving for some time, I had yet to really partake in any planned dumpster diving. Sure, I had liberated perfectly good power strips, lamps, rugs and the occasional bottle of laundry detergent from trash piles while people were moving out of dorms. But that was just being opportunistic. I had many unanswered questions: could you actually find wine? Is Trader Joe's as good a place to dumpster dive as people say? Is there really a treasure trove of freebies hidden in the back streets and alleys of America?

Heading out on my first dumpster diving excursion, I was practically salivating over the free bottles of wine I was sure I would find. Unfortunately, while the trip was not an absolute failure, I was somewhat disappointed in the number of locked dumpsters we encountered and the overall lack of totally sweet stuff we were able to find. That's not to say we didn't find anything of value, but rather finding the right dumpsters to dive was a little harder than we anticipated and Trader Joe's wine proved to be elusive.

View Larger Map

As you can see from the map, we were only able to find valuable loot in 3 dumpsters in the East Bay. The locations are marked with a description of the loot we found there. Lucky's had by far the best stuff. We got about 20 loaves of bread and a pumpkin there.

Do you know of any good dumpster diving locations in the Bay Area? If you do, add them to the map. Two things to keep in mind aspiring dumpster divers:

1. The US Supreme Court has ruled that there is no common law expectation of privacy for discarded materials. So, unless specifically prohibited by state or local government, dumpster diving is probably legal, though trespassing may not be.
2. Bring gloves--believe it or not, trash can be pretty dirty sometimes

With that, gentle reader, I leave you with this final thought on dumpster diving:

Steal a taco, steal my heart

The drive to find free food opportunities usually reserved for college students has spread to the general populace. Everyone in the country is eligible to 'steal' a taco this coming Tuesday from 2-6 pm at any participating Taco Bell. Don't miss your chance!
I garnered an odd fascination with the aforementioned dining establishment several years back after I witnessed an employee make my burrito while wearing an uncovered cast. It was a yellowing cast that, after several weeks of taco prepping, had probably turned into something resembling a a mobile 7-layer burrito. I imagined the bright orange plaster shell filled with yellowing cotton, fresh dead skin, crustified beans, rotten green tomatoes, wilted lettuce, moldy cheese and a dabble of arm sweat. I've long tried to get to the bottom of my sustained fixation with TBell even in light of a spate of similarly questionable dining experiences. The only idea I came up with is this: Taco Bell horror stories are the stuff of tall tales told by grandparents and cool great uncles to the unassuming children of their offspring. In 2050 I won't be saying "I walked 12 miles to school through a blizzard uphill both ways" but instead, "I once ate 17 hard shell tacos in one sitting and found cockroaches in three of them." And I'll be the coolest old guy around because of it.

So don't forget your free taco on Tuesday. Think of it as character building. But try as the country may, college students are still the best at sniffing out free grub. Take the ingenuity of a few MIT students who went a step further than tracking food by smell and word of mouth; they created a community website to advertise free food opportunities on campus.

In these tough economic times, this free food calendar is starting to creep up on my internet browser's bookmark list. Let's hope they can't smell that I'm from another university.

Do you live in a constitution free zone?

The border of the US has long been an exception to the protections granted under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Where exactly does this border fall? According to the federal government "the border" is a 100-mile strip surrounding the external boundary of the US. By this definition 2/3's of the population and 9 out of the 10 largest metropolitan areas are located in "the border". According to the ACLU, the Border Patrol has begun setting up checkpoints within this "border area" in several southwestern states. They worry (rightfully so) that exempting citizens from Forth Amendment protections in this 100-mile strip sets a dangerous precedent for further erosion of our rights.

Filipino Cuisine, Misunderstood

Filipino food is occasionally on the menus in the "Pan-Asian" restaurants that tend to crop up mostly in suburban communities where the average eater probably can't tell the difference between Cantonese and Szechuan cuisines and where a nouveau riche fetish for the recherché creates a market for food eaten with chopsticks, generally. Despite this phenomenon, Filipino dishes rarely get a fair shake.

So when I stumbled on this article about Filipino cuisine in the Wall Street Journal the other day, I was pretty pleased to see an account of the nation's gastronomy that one does not usually see. The columnist writes,

"The cuisine varies widely region to region, showing Chinese, Malay, Spanish and American influences. Over the centuries, Filipinos have combined flavors introduced by foreign traders, colonizers and occupiers with local ingredients and cooking techniques to create something unique and exciting.

Poorly prepared, uninteresting food does exist in Manila -- just as it does everywhere in Southeast Asia. But if you know what specialties to look for and where to find them, a weekend of dining in Manila can be every bit as satisfying as in any of the region's other major cities."

Similarly, finding or preparing Filipino food outside of the Phillippines can be rewarding if you know how and where to look.

I've been eating my emigré grandmother's cooking for as long as I can remember and I frankly can't understand why Filipino food is so misunderstood by Americans. With the success of Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, not to mention the ubiquity of Chinese take-out, you'd think that there would be a ripe market for similar establishments serving food from the Phillippines. This is probably due in part to a dearth of entreprenurial Filipino restaurateurs, but it seems to me that if you cook it they will come. I can't help but feel that a little more education about the culinary offerings of the Phillippines would go a long way to boosting the marketshare of the food of my family's homeland.


Cendrillon is an incredible Filipino restaurant owned by a friend of my family in Manhattan, so if you're in New York, be sure to check it out. Their website also has some great recipes. The lumpia is especially good. Other recipes to search for are adobo and pancit.

Birthday Bicycles

A build-your-own bike company out of San Fran has won me over for it's simplicity and artistic roots. Why buy a branded pre-made human-powered two-wheeler when you can buy a work of art that you create?

At Mission Bicycle you call the shots and the canvas is your bike. Pick the colors and style of every component, from the frame and handlebars to the crank set and chain.

After seeing custom-built 'fixies' cruising around San Francisco, Mission Bicycle co-founder Zack Rosen wondered why there weren't any bike companies making them? That's when he and Matt Cheney started up the company.

"These bikes are great for the city, they're fun, they look awesome and there's a strong community into them and building them," explains Zack. Folks from around the world share pictures of ther creations on websites like Fixed Gear Gallery, a testament to the passion and pride within the fixie community.

The $830 price tag is a little steep for me but I'll get one someday. As a birthday present perhaps... Speaking of, a Grown Ass People Happy Birthday goes out to my dear friend Liz, who is also to be thanked for pointing me to Mission Bicycle and connecting me with Zack. Birthday wishes also go out to our very own Bridget who will be debuting on GAP next week, stay tuned...

Despite the price, I had fun just dreaming about the perfect color combination for my future bike. Zack wouldn't reveal his favorite color combo, taking a more diplomatic stance on the issue of fixie design: "I don't have a personal favorite. I like the ones that have a darker color on the frame, black or gray, and then have tasteful accents on rims and handlebars." And while clean designs with good color balance and some uniformity are usually the most popular, choosing a color combo for your fixie is a very personal decision.

Zack: "People experiment and come up with crazy ideas. We build them."

I'm all for taking crazy ideas and running(er, peddling) with them.

If I Had to Marry a Robot I would Marry Robot Beyonce

Last year, in a move heralded as "completely inappropriate" and "just gross", two co-workers and I gave our students an article discussing the possibilities of people having sex, falling in love with, and marrying robots. The article was based heavily based on David Levy's book Love and Sex with Robots. Levy makes some interesting points about the nature of love and attachment while building up to his central argument: humans will be falling in love with life-like sexbots by 2050. Not long after, Levy predicts that Massachusetts will be the first state to legalize human robot marriage. Levy makes some good points--humans love their pets and feel attached to their computers--but I don't know if the stigma of having a robot girlfriend will have worn off by 2050.

Personally, I don't think I'll ever prefer robot women over their organic counterparts. Though if I had to date a robot, I would want to date Robot-Beyoncé. (Has anyone noticed that in her latest music video she has a robot arm?) Though Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Number Six from Battlestar Galactica are close runners up.

Education Debate: The Drinking Game

In case you still haven't had your fill of pre-election debating, tonight the Teachers College at Columbia University is hosting a debate between Linda Darling-Hammond and Lisa Graham Keegan, the education advisers for the Obama and McCain campaigns respectively. The debate will be from 7 to 9 pm eastern time and can be viewed online here. The Teachers College website has a press release with information on Darling-Hammond and Graham Keegan's backgrounds.

Due to the popularity of previous debate-drinking game articles I've taken it upon myself to make rules for an education debate specific drinking game.

First, chose a candidates' education adviser.

If Darling-Hammond is your choice take one drink when:

• She says something critical of private school vouchers
• She links Graham Keegan/McCain to NCLB
• She uses the word "change" in reference to Obama's campaign
• She says something in praise of teachers unions
• She makes a personal attack or interrupts her opponent
  

If Graham Keegan is your choice take one drink when:

• She advocates vouchers to pay for private schools
• She refers to McCain as a Maverick
• She uses the phrase "school accountability" to advocate for more standardized testing
• She says something implicitly racist
• She says something critical of teachers unions
• She makes a personal attack or interrupts her opponent

If the adviser you choose pulls a "Palin" (Dodges the question to highlight their own talking points), or praises NCLB drink twice

If the advisers agree on anything, everyone finishes their current drink

Note: As far as I can tell, Grown Ass People is the only website to bring you an educational policy debate specific drinking game. Yes I know, we rock.

God Bless Socialism

As the presidential race continues, the McCain camp, criticizing Obama’s tax code, calls him a socialist for what he sees as the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. McCain argues that raising taxes during a recession will reduce incentive for growth for many small businesses, thereby inhibiting the engine of job creation. The suggestion, similarly, is that this economic plan is un-American, in contrast to free market capitalism.

The Washington Post compared the candidates' tax proposals in the following graphic:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/09/ST2008060900950.html

In light of the recent bailouts of the largest financial firms, Johanna Neuman, writes in the Los Angeles Times that McCain has little ground to call Obama’s tax code socialist. Privatizing wealth and socializing debt leaves no room for McCain, who suspended his campaign to muster support for the bailout, to be a credible champion of free market capitalism.

Joe Klein concurs in his TIME magazine blog and notes the McCain tax proposal is its own form of upward socialism. He writes, "McCain accuses Obama of socialism, even though his own health care tax credit is refundable--and therefore a distribution of wealth downward...Of course, McCain has been on the record for months--years, actually--in favor of redistributing wealth...upward, toward the wealthy, on the theory that it will "trickle down."

Colin Powell, in support of Obama, criticizes the attack against Obama’s tax code: "Taxes are always a redistribution of money. Most of the taxes that are redistributed go back to those who pay them, in roads and airports and hospitals and schools. And taxes are necessary for the common good. And there's nothing wrong with examining what our tax structure is or who should be paying more or who should be paying less, and for us to say that makes you a socialist is an unfortunate characterization that I don't think is accurate."

For conservative Republicans, like the Joe the plumber, this issue is more than just taxes. They are also concerned that the Obama tax proposal is symptomatic of the growth of a socialistic state against the individual, increases in the size of government, and the diminishment of individual freedoms and civil liberties.

From “Why Obama’s Socialism Matters” in the American Thinker, the author writes: “Both history and current events demonstrate that the socialist reality is always bad for the individual, and this is true whether one is looking at the painfully brutal socialism of the Nazis or the Soviets or the Chinese, with its wholesale slaughters, or at the soft socialism of England, in which people's lives are ever more tightly circumscribed, and the state incrementally destroys individual freedom. And that is why Obama's socialism matters.

“Regardless of Obama’s presumed good intentions, socialism always brings a society to a bad ending. I don’t want to believe that Americans who live in a free society that allows people to think what they will, do what they want, and succeed if they can, will willingly hand themselves over to the socialist ideology. They must therefore be reminded, again and again and again, that socialism isn’t just another political party; it’s the death knell to freedom.”

That’s a stretch. But for Joe the plumber, this is about keeping what you earn, working for the American Dream. However, consider Working Joe-ette from the working class who writes:

“I'm confused by comments implying that people who make a lot of money are also the people who work hard. I have lived in very economically depressed parts of our country and in thriving areas and in all of these places, I have met successful individuals who float by and struggling "welfare moms" who work tirelessly. Maintaining that your present circumstances are completely based on individual initiative, resourcefulness, drive or character is absurd. Sure, we have free will and this influences, TO AN EXTENT, how well someone does. However, being born in a safe neighborhood with good schools and well-off parents who want their children to receive quality education and learn what options exist for their future gives those Americans a leg up on those who are born into a family with absent parents, or illness, or crumbling local infrastructure, or poor options for education, or a local industry that fails.

“Obama's point is that strengthening our middle class strengthens our country. McCain's economic policies are largely targeted to those who don't need the tax cuts anyway. Furthermore, how can we afford cutting taxes to the extent McCain proposes when we're in deep hole of debt (due to a lengthy, cost war we began which McCain wants to continue)?”

Cartoon-Off

What happens when New Yorker cartoon artist Farley Katz runs into XKCD creator Randall Monroe while shopping for groceries? A cartoon-off ensues.

Monroe's entry for the final drawing in the cartoon-off: draw a picture of your favorite animal eating your favorite food.

Blog Spawn

We are working on a real logo

It's hard to believe Grown Ass People had its official launch just two weeks ago. Already, we are beginning to see changes in the blogosphere. This week we are welcoming two new authors to GAP:

Bridget, who is doing the ex-patriot thing and will be posting from Guatemala.

Anthony, who I'm sure lives somewhere and does something. He will be posting too.

Also, since we have launched, a number of friends and acquaintances have started blogs. Grown Ass People can't really take credit for inspiring any of these blogs, except for Steve's, which it seems was created as a direct attack on GAP's authors. Thanks Steve.

Pop, crisps and video night--Steve blogs about being Steve and living in Chicago's Boystown. In his first post he explains that his blog was created "in response to my fame whoring friend's blog." Can you guess who those friends are?

teaching wide-awake--A young Chicago Public Schools art teacher reflects on her graduate studies and the transformative power of a meaningful art education.

2bluesheep--Whitney's adventures in The Gambia. She won't get there till early November though.

fishgreenfish--Lisa and Zoe. Lisa's moving to Chicago in November. She needs a job. Will you find one for her? What will Zoe do if she gets the job of her dreams? Part cooking show, part diary, part... something. All you college kids want to know what life is like after you graduate? Lisa and Zoe have the answer. Note: this vlog actually predates the creation of GAP.

So thank you gentle reader, for your continuing support of Grown Ass People. We'll keep posting, so long as you keep coming back.

McCain’s Conservative Populism: Joe, bring your plunger.

Recent debates and stump speeches have shown a clearly different McCain - a McCain for the people, a McCain for the plumber and waitress and schoolteacher, an imperfect human McCain who can laugh and say he “screwed up” to Letterman, a McCain (though wedded to a beer heiress who made 4.7 million last year and somehow can relate to the plight of voters who scrape 10 dollars an hour), yes, that McCain, ladies and gentlemen, wide-eyed, a wanderer Maverick, is fighting for the everyday taxpayer, you and me.

My friends, blink at the following:

“Change is coming,” he says behind a podium at Virginia Beach, October 13^th, three weeks after claiming, “The fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

“These are hard times. Our economy is in crisis. Financial markets are collapsing. Credit is drying up. Your savings are in danger. Your retirement is at risk. Jobs are disappearing. The cost of health care, your children's college, gasoline and groceries are rising all the time with no end in sight. While your most important asset -- your home -- is losing value every day.

“. . . . We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight . . . .”

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. It is near plagiarism in tone, content and even phrasing to his opponent who has been saying this for nearly two years. It is the lipstick, as they say, of both campaigns. But in the McCain camp, following the addition of Palin on the ticket, this new populist rhetoric is posed in irony and hypocrisy against its speaker.

It cries foul to the regime that created the financial meltdown without calling attention to those complicit in McCain’s own campaign. It cries foul against pork barrel spending while signing 140 billion of new pork onto the bailout. It cries foul against the greed of corporate executives while one of McCain’s advisors took over 40 million dollars severance as 20,000 of her employees were laid off. It cries foul against Obama’s tax code but offers to continue the Bush tax code that threatens to dissolve the middle class.

It cries foul when it shouldn’t.

It cries foul against abuses of power while being found guilty of the same crime. It cries foul against the liberal media elite without giving an interview.

With little time till election day, McCain’s populist rhetoric, used in conjunction with nationalist and religious fundamentalist attitudes, continues in an irresponsible campaign to paint its opponent as unqualified, untested, unpresidential, unChristian, unAmerican, a terrorist, inciting McCain supporters to racism and near violence.

Consider Rep. Bachmann of Minnesota, on Hardball with Chris Matthews, revisiting McCarthyism: “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of Congress and find out, Are they pro-America or anti-America?”

Consider, between cries of “Obama bin Lyin”, the fat man at the McCain rally proudly holding his Curious George monkey doll with the Obama sticker on its forehead. Or the Obama food stamp circulating among Republicans in the Inland Empire. Or the confused, pitiful woman, in need of a haircut, who fears the 3.5 million Arab Americans living among us.

Lastly, consider history: when right-wing populism became a dirty word, sowing the seeds of fascism. How a brand of right-wing populism gathered middle-class support for the Nazis in Wiemar Germany. How it consolidated a group in the South to wear hoods and terrorize our citizens.

And how a brand of right-wing populism brought together a number of Alaskans, dreaming of their own country, under a party leader who said: “The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. And I won't be buried under their damn flag. I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."

McCain’s supporters have become radicals. What kind of change does the McCain-Palin ticket propose?

Breaking News: In the country we are left with, in the absence of any Republican party leadership, the McCain campaign's disingenuous attempt to win over the working class voter has found yet another conservative talking parrot in Joe the plumber, who much like his female counterpart in Palin, has little credibility, so much disdain for those who disagree, misrepresented himself to the American public, and, according to the Lucas County Building Regulations in Ohio, is not qualified for his job.

Sex Ed: The Midwestern Way

Abstinence only sex education is beyond irresponsible. Comprehensive sex ed. is clearly better, but tends to be dry. In my experience it has mostly consisted of the teacher presenting a table of various contraception methods and their annual percent failure rate. Oh yeah, and that part where they put the condom over the banana. "Always pinch the tip and make sure you put it on the right way!" As a teacher though, I will admit that having frank conversations about sex and sexuality with a class full of hormonal high schoolers can be uncomfortable at times.

Fortunately, there is the ambiguously titled podcast the Midwest Teen Sex Show (note: the podcast features neither real teens nor real sex). MTSS covers a wide range of topics surrounding sex and sexuality in the teenager's native language: crass sarcasm. The podcast comes out once a month and deals with topics that are generally left out of sex ed. curricula: brake-ups, the older boyfriend, orgasms, masturbation, fetishes, etc.

MTSS addresses questions that teens have about sex that tend to go unanswered. Some have criticized the show as inappropriate, insensitive and for focusing more on the physical aspects of relationships over the emotional aspects. ABC news recently did a feature that fills in a lot of the background information and some of the controversies surrounding MTSS. Personally, I like MTSS's sometimes-offensive style of humor. I think that it's a good resource for any teen, or even parents with questions about sex.

MTSS also makes Abstinence, The Condom. Now you can choose Abstinence while having sex.

More Straws in an Increasingly Small Milkshake

Gas prices are high. At certain political rallies this election season an angry mob has been heard chanting, "Drill, baby, drill! Drill, baby, drill!" Politicians and lobbyists are telling us that we need to ramp up domestic drilling in order to reduce gas prices and lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Still many remain skeptical that increased domestic oil production will have any substantial impact on prices at the pump. The economics of the energy sector are complex and at times counter intuitive. Fortunately Tim Kailing's elliptical research has come to the rescue. In an essay entitled Why "Drill, Baby, Drill!" is Not a National Energy Policy, Kailing explores the relationship between oil drilling and production.

Spoiler alert: more domestic drilling will make a lot of money for oil companies, but won't impact the price at the pump.


Kailing's key points:

1. There is little correlation between the amount of drilling and total domestic oil production
2. More drilling activity leads to less oil production per rig
3. There is a time delay between increasing in drilling and increased oil production, about 4-6 years
4. As oil scarcity increases, so does its price; there is still a large profit motive for oil companies despite diminishing supplies

The last section of the essay really sums things up well:

The data show that the sentiments behind "Drill, Baby, Drill!" do not translate into a rational or effective national energy policy. In fact, aggressively developing our nation's late stage oil reserves is arguably precisely against our long-term national interest. The data are clear: ramping up domestic drilling will at best only slightly slow the rate of decrease of our domestic oil production, but it will rapidly exhaust our remaining precious domestic oil reserves. And the faster we use up the little oil we have left, the quicker OPEC will be the only one at the table with any chips left. Strategically, this is a loser's strategy.

In other words, they want to drink our milkshake. They want to drink it up! But we are long overdue for a major diet overhaul.

Image Credit: Tim Kailing

Greenspan’s Monstrous Love Child – A Grim Bedtime Story

Let's face it: the current economic crisis and the events that have lead up to it are complicated to say the least. I've read articles in the Times, listened to NPR coverage, and watched the Daily Show. Still, this whole global financial mess seems murky at best. Tim Kailing, who runs the website ellipticalresearch.com, has a taken a unique approach to understanding our current economic woes: explaining the Panic in the form of a bedtime story. Here is an excerpt:

You see, it is true that during the height of his fame, Greenspan seemed almost ethereal; indeed, hardly made of flesh. Yet it was also rumored that long ago, while young and greedy of heart and mind, he had fallen deeply in love with a mad siren called Ayn. Those days seemed long ago, but somehow, through some terrible magic, Greenspan produced a monstrous child out of this love—a child clearly begat of this reckless siren.
The details are sketchy. This black magic is now mostly lost. The story which is strangest, yet rings true, is that Greenspan, while chanting incantations in the tub, somehow managed to animate a soap bubble, and then set it loose upon the world. This monstrous child was named in full: the Derivatives Bubble. But Greenspan fondly called him Derbub.

The whole story is definitely worth a read. It's also a chance to get a good laugh while learning more about the nature of the economic crisis.

Road Trip!

This upcoming weekend is Michigan Law's October recess and a group of my friends and I are road-tripping from Ann Arbor to Traverse City to more properly enjoy autumn. (These days, it seems seasonal color is the last thing Michigan has going for it.)

Of course, being a conscientious, liberally-educated white person, I am of course concerned with the environment and also putting more money into the coffers of oil companies. I'm also poor (relatively speaking).

Thus, I was delighted to find the below site, which calculates how much a trip between two places costs based on the distance and the make and year of your car.

Artificial Intelligence Battle Royale

Over the weekend the world's best artificial intelligence programs competed for the 18th annual Loebner Prize. To win the $100, 000 prize, the AI's need to pass the Turing Test. In the test, named for Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, human judges have text-based conversations with someone in a separate room, either another human, or one of the AI programs. If a program manages to convince at least 30% of the judges it is in fact a human, then it wins the prize.

None of the AI's this year managed to reach the 30% threshold, but a program named Elbot came close fooling 25% of the judges. If you talk to Elbot, you'll notice that getting a straight answer out of it is almost as hard as getting one from a politician.

Are these really my fellow Americans?

This video of McCain supporters answering questions about Obama being a terrorist made me sad.



How can there be people like this in our country? It is no wonder terrorists question our values.

I recently wrote about the failures of our educational system because of backwards policies and practices. This video is way more disheartening when it comes to that topic. The ideological ineptitude of some makes me think we should make the emphasis of respect and tolerance in our teaching a priority. The ignorance of our populace is frightening and sickening and must not be ignored. While we may not have government-mandated segregation anymore, racism is a major and present danger that we must combat in all aspects of our lives, starting with our educational system.

Wanker Claims Human Evolution is Stopping

Apparently, just because you are the head of genetics at a respected university doesn't mean you can't talk out of your ass. Case in point: Steve Jones, head of genetics at University College London, is getting a great deal of attention for an lecture he is giving entitled "Human evolution is over." Jones justifies his argument that human evolution is grinding to a halt with two key points: first, more humans than ever before are surviving to reproductive age, which indicates that there is less selection pressure. Secondly, (at least in Western Europe), fewer men above the age of 35 are fathering children. As men age, our sperm cells accumulate more replication errors (mutations), thus Jones concludes there fewer mutations being passed on to future generations. These arguments may seem convincing to anyone who hasn't taken intro biology, but any undergrad worth their auto-pipette should be able to see right through Professor Jones' nonsense.

So, let's take sometime today to address some common misconceptions about evolution and the fallacious arguments being used by the distinguished Prof. Wanker.

If we are going to be discussing evolution, I think it's important to start by defining it. Evolution is often defined as a change in the frequency of different versions of a gene (alleles) in a population. As long as there is mutation and mating in a population, there will inevitably be some change in that population's allele frequency and thus, evolution. There is really only one situation in which a species stops evolving: when they become extinct. Are humans extinct? No. Are humans evolving? Yes. Is the Yangtze River Dolphin evolving? No; it's extinct.

There is a common misconception that, since modern technology allows numerous people who would have died "back in the day" to survive, we are slowing or stopping evolution. It's true that in the past century we have greatly reduced or eliminated natural selection against certain once fatal traits, i.e. hemophilia. That doesn't mean that we aren't evolving anymore, it just means that our environment has changed drastically in recent years. In fact, a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences came to exactly the opposite conclusion as Prof. Wanker. They found that human evolution appears to be happening more rapidly than ever. What do they credit for this acceleration? Why our rapidly changing environment and large population size. Another key difference between the PNAS paper and Jones' argument is that the team who found human evolution to be accelerating actually analyzed data to draw their conclusion. Check out this figure from their paper:



What does this show? Basically that the data set used in the PNAS study does not fit a null hypothesis that there has been a constant rate of evolution in humans in the last 80,000 years. Instead, the data better fit a model that shows acceleration of evolution in humans.

Evolution, and human evolution in particular, is a fascinating topic that can give us incredible insights into who we are and how we got to be where we are. Unfortunately, it is also something that is often misunderstood. There are a lot of great resources for understanding evolution on the interweb. New Scientist did a whole series on common myths and misconceptions surrounding evolution. John Hawks, an anthropologist at UW Madison, covers the acceleration in human evolution from a more digestible point of view.

So next time some knucklehead comes at you talking all sorts of nonsense about how humans have stopped evolving, come right back at them with an intellectual roundhouse kick to the face. And if they start talking about devolution... Well, I guess I'll save that for another day.

Some Typography I Like

I like words. I like how words are designed to look. I like it when words are used in interesting ways.

Here are a few cool typography links I like.

Wordle is a great website that lets you create custom word clouds like the one below. This one I made from the content of Grown Ass People:



Here's an Obama poster created by designer-of-some-renown, Michael Bierut, which is currently making the circuit of design blogs. You can check out the blog that Bierut edits here.



Finally, this is an animated version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights from Seth Brau on Vimeo.

Rentable Robotic Exoskeleton

Cyberdyne, a Japanese robotics company announced plans recently to begin renting their robotic exoskeleton, HAL, to the public. The exoskeleton, whose name is an acronym for hybrid assistive limb, is designed to help people with limited mobility or those whose jobs require heavy lifting. The robot works by sensing neural impulses sent by the brain to the muscles and mimicking its wearer's natural motion. For just $2,200 a month you can get your own exoskeleton that will increase your strength 2-10 fold.



Unfortunately, it seems as if HAL might be a harbinger of our impending doom. Remember, a robotics company named Cyberdyne will eventually develop an artificial intelligence named Skynet that will attempt to exterminate humanity.

Where the singles at?

Sperling's BestPlaces did some commonsense analysis of census data and presents some interesting lists on percentages of singles and other fun numbers for metropolitan areas. The contributors of this blog seem to fit the mold. All single, we live in (or at least very near to) numbers 1, 2 and 4.

The Top Ten "Solo Cities"
Rank Metro Area % Single
1 San Francisco, CA 44.7
2 Detroit, MI 44
3 New York, NY 39.8
4 Boston, MA 39.2
5 New Orleans, LA 39.1
6 Los Angeles, CA 37.7
7 Fort Lauderdale, FL 37.2
8 Las Vegas, NV 37
9 Miami, FL 36.9
10 Albuquerque, NM 36.8

And did I mention we're all single?

Scientists are Barbarians

Smarty-man and science writer Carl Zimmer's blog features a section where scientists can send in pictures of their tattoos.


This begs the question: are these scientists barbarians? Check out the Science Tattoo Emporium if you want to see some of the nerdiest tattoos ever.

I Am a Barbarian

Boing Boing recently posted about the author and social critic, James Howard Kunstler, and his website's "Eyesore of the Month" post which regularly decries structures he deems architecturally abhorrent. August's Eyesore was a street-level tattoo parlor in New York. Previous entries to his monthly chronicle of blots on the urban landscape include gargantuan Uncle Sams and buildings seemingly pulled out of communist Yugoslavia. However, what differentiates August's entry from these earlier posts is that Kunstler very vehemently denounces the activity taking place inside instead of the edifice itself; he calls it "a symptom of the growing barbarism of American life."

I am not going to get into whether or not we've recently become more barbarous. I will, however, take issue that a tattoo parlor in New York is somehow indicative of a downward spiral into cultural dissipation.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I have two tattoos and I plan on getting more. On my right shoulder I have a modified version of a 15th century version of an Isidorean T and O map and on my right forearm I have a detail from that same map, the three undulating lines in the top left corner of the previous link. (Sorry: no camera at the moment to document the real deal.) Am I exacerbating the symptoms of the growing barbarism of American life? Are my friends with tattoos, by all accounts decent, productive members of society with jobs and children and college loans, also contributing to the inevitable dissolution of the fabric of our society? As we indelibly ink our skin, are we also indelibly leaving an insidious and corrosive imprint on the mores of our civilization?

For my part, I don't feel that I'm doing any of these things. I live in the midst of a bevy of overworked law school students, not a ravening horde of rapacious nomads intent on the destruction of Rome or Washington D.C.

While they are sometimes associated with gang violence and deviant social behavior, tattoos also have a long and venerable history as an important and constructive facet of cultures all over the world. In some places, it was an important part of spiritual life and central to rites of passage. Tattoos are also becoming more and more accepted in mainstream society today. Television shows like Miami and L.A. Ink are indicative of this. The FDA is preparing to begin regulating the production of tattoo inks as the art form becomes increasingly prevalent. There is also a growing realm of intellectual property law that deals with who owns the copyrights to tattoo design.

Perhaps this growing prevalence is what James Kuntsler is afraid of, that as tattooing becomes more and more common we are devolving into creatures nasty and brutish. I disagree. I don't think we're doomed to become savage animals simply because we are inked. I think that our positive impulses will predominantly prevail over our baser, hateful natures.

But please don't take my word for it:

Let the Dirty Tricks Begin!

With less than 30 days left until the election, reports are surfacing about voter intimidation and suppression campaigns gearing up in battleground states. We've already covered a story about voter suppression tactics in Michigan; ABC news is carrying a good story on scare tactics being used against students on college campuses. It seems that an Obama "supporter" posted fliers on Drexel University's campus warning other Obama supporters that there would be undercover cops at polling places targeting people for everything from outstanding warrants to unpaid parking tickets:


Those of us who live in swing states should be on the lookout for the following in the weeks before the election:

- "Push-poll" phone calls using the guise of a survey to push negative information about a candidate.

- Leaflets or emails listing the wrong date or a "rain date" for the election.

- Automated voicemail messages telling voters that the location of their polling place has changed.

- Repeated late night automated "robo-calls" with a message from a candidate.

The Freakonomics Blog has a good article covering the history of dirty politics in the US, and a great interview with former Republican operative and author of How to Rig an Election, Allen Raymond. The interview, in which Raymond details how some campaigns exploit bigotry against their opponent is illuminating, though fairly disturbing.

Conventional Instruction or Bust?

My educational career has, for the most part, been fueled by answer-driven learning. I study material so I can answer test questions correctly. From comparing my American graduate student peers to those from abroad, it has become clear that this phenomena seems more predominant among Americans. Studies in physics education* are particularly compelling in demonstrating the ineffectiveness of conventional instruction. It seems students do well on quantitative test questions and even receive good grades in classes but they have little understanding of the underlying concepts. Students are clearly driven by a hunger for grades and teachers are driven by an expectation to quantify knowledge.

We need a paradigm shift in teaching. Understanding that students have different learning styles and different forms of intelligence is an important step. Beyond that, we have to break our reliance on testing information and rather, build on a philosophy of cultivating understanding. It seems our political leaders need a lesson in the fundamental problems of our educational system that seem to transcend socioeconomic boundaries (although there are plenty of problems associated with socioeconomic differences). The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) further cements this addiction to testing. There are many criticisms of the program (check the Wikipedia article if you're interested) but my biggest problem with NCLB is its unrelenting punishment of anything that deviates from test-based teaching.

While it doesn't really seem like Joe Biden or Sarah Palin really understand this issue, Biden at least has clear priorities when it comes to education (which is a good start). He called education the "engine that is going to give us the economic growth and competitiveness that we need." This is on point but perhaps we should leave educational policy up to educators rather than legislators. If we continue to neglect eduction we will fall behind in the global economy, as Biden hinted at. At the very least we shouldn't let Palin make any decisions. After praise for Biden's wife and a shout out to her brother's third grade class, Palin's discussion of education policy turned from pointless to pointless and incoherent: "We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it's near and dear to my heart. I'm very, very concerned about where we're going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena." She discusses increased 'emphasis' and 'attention' without any mention of money. That's probably because we wouldn't have any money left after further Republican deregulation and mind-numbing tax cuts for corporations. Please vote.


*(one example) Halloun, IA & D Hestenes. The initial knowledge state of college physics students. Am. J. Phys. 53 (11), November 1985, pp 1043-1048.

Ecuador’s New Constitution First to Guarantee Rights to Nature

Rio Tiputini in Amazonian Ecuador

On Sunday the citizens of Ecuador voted to adopt a new constitution. Most news coverage of the referendum has focused on how it could allow leftist president, Rafael Correa, to solidify his power. To me though, the most interesting aspect of the new constitution is that it grants inalienable rights to nature.

The Pennsylvania based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) assisted in drafting the “Rights of Nature” chapter in the new constitution. Language in the document assures nature the “right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution” and obligates the government to take “precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.”

This is certainly powerful language, but the extent of its impact remains unclear. During my time living in Ecuador, I became acutely aware of the discrepancy between the country’s laws and their enforcement.

Ecuador is a country where strong environmental protections could have a tremendous impact. Due to its location on the equator and its position between the Amazon Rainforest and the Pacific Ocean, Ecuador is blessed with tremendous biodiversity. While large areas of the country remain pristine, there are also tremendous pressures on the environment. Loggers, oil extraction, and new settlers are destroying large areas of rainforest. The coastal mangroves are being cleared to make room for shrimp farms. The unique plants and animals of the Galapagos are being killed by invasive species.

There is also tremendous economic pressure working against the environment. Ecuador’s largest exports are petroleum, bananas, and shrimp. These industries can be very short sighted, and often put near-term profits before sustainability. Tourism is beginning to play an increasingly important roll in the Ecuador’s economy. In recent years it has become the 5th largest industry. Tourism, and more specifically, environmentally responsible and sustainable tourism, has a great potential to generate income for the Andean nation while preserving its natural treasures.

Ecuador’s decision to constitutionally protect the rights of the natural world could have an impact far beyond its borders. CELDF has been contacted about assisting in drafting similar language for Nepal’s first ever constitution.

-Ben Connor Barrie

Note: This article was also posted on sustainabledesignupdate.com, a blog I contribute to from time to time.