Atomized junior

Vladimir Tecumseh Putin

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:31:21 GMT

This season rose revolutions bleed red. This is Vladimir Putin's gambit: Direct confrontation and force Georgia Fight Spreads, Moscow Issues Ultimatum - NYTimes.com. Demonstrating that he is intent on not just being a leader determined to stop what centrifugal forces would tear Russia apart, but to wind the clock back mightily. And in definite terms it is Putin not Medvedev. The Tsar still reigns. This only delays the day when Russia will still have to confront that inevitable crisis of authoritarian rule, transition. If not by election, then to your blood, to a tyrant, or to the deluge. The particular ground for this confrontation, South Ossetia, confused me. I thought the Russians and Georgians were fighting over a place that had beach resorts (Abkhazia). Well, its both really and more besides Russia's aim in Georgia battle was strategic - Los Angeles Times:.

The simple reason Russia did this is because they could Russia Vows to Support Two Enclaves. in Retort to Bush - NYTimes.com:. To send a message to all the former Soviets and Warsaw Pact states that had the temerity to go their own way, grow ties to the west, particularly the ones that signaled that they might join NATO. The violence and odious use of para-militaries, a calculated thumb in the west's eye. Here recall Kosova, Bosnia, and our position there that paramilitary group activities constituted war crimes.

This will have little effect Putin's on increasing ambition to rebuild a Russian sphere of influence, to place Russia back on a path of independent destiny. The cyber attacks leading this and other signs in this particular case hint strongly that this was not an ad hoc incident that spun out of control, but a carefully planned provocation. How strong is Putin's position, How far does energy wealth get him? The control that Gazprom and other energy entities gives him is very real, the economies, the winter heating of vast swaths of northern and central europe are dependent on it. People come to the oil-haves with their lists of needs. How strong is the Russian military (regionally if not OOA). Not very, really. However, adjacency is a force-multiplier, they were able to put 25 thousand troops against 9 thousand easily. I heard a panel (on a radio show) this week full of people dismissing Russia's capabilities, essentially arguing against the current operation. This went on until someone on the panel reminded them they had already done it. It was a fait accompli. For a few seconds at least the panel was very quiet. The way forward now is to consolidate on the alarm that this has engendered.

The other side of this coin is how weakened are we? Militarily distracted and exhausted by Iraq and Afghanistan. How abused and over-extended are our intelligence capabilities. Especially as we try to gin up the potential for a war with Iran. Amidst all the rhetoric and saber rattling. I want to give rhetoric games a quick review. Keep it to words. Leave it so that the other fellow ends up saying all the stupid stuff. Why is our rhetoric so out of line with our available responses? Whatever happened to walk softly and carry a big stick. I guess when you have no stick, you talk smack. Candidate McCains's posturing on this is for domestic consumption only. He has no hidden reserve of answers, no divisions in his pocket, no ethical stance against invasions, regime change, when they can be effected. He bought the Bush administration's imperial nihilism and now he owns it. Amid the calls for action, I want to give diplomacy its due. Against the slander that all talk is Sudetan and forever Munich. Properly done diplomacy will remove war from an opponent's repertoire of rational options before they seriously consider them. The US's reasoning seems limited to Secretary Rice's position that 'this isn't 1968' (or even presumably 1978) That these days Russia wants to be part of the world system rather than outside it, and the US still owns that.

There is the neo conservative angle. The confederacy of Cheneys has not gone away they have just been working quieter. "The Georgian leadership is a special project for the United States," the Russians say. Saakashvili has been a favorite, a close ally of the administration's political and economic agendas, and dependable. However, Ambassador Khalilzad's almost stuttering interview on NPR about Saakashvili's move into South Ossetia and the Russian invasion that followed was a sign that that he at least was caught unprepared for how things unfolded. I read that while President Bush was still in China, Dick Cheney was phoning Saakashvili. It makes you wonder what they were telling the Georgians. Not so much that we were telling them to try to retake South Ossetia or giving them green lights, but we were giving them no caution or reason for caution.

This bear baiting in Georgia Ukraine Azerbaijan Uzbekistan Poland, born of some notion that we won the cold war in some definitive and absolute fashion, beyond the crass and ossified old Soviet system finally crumbling away under its own sick weight. That we were handed by Athena the right to impose terms and rule singly, globally. Was this necessary or wise? What else is involved?

Ordo quod obses, order and security. These are the real watchwords of our times. Democracy: the unencumbered aspirational charge of the people to rule their own destiny, when you can get any one to even take that notion seriously comes in a distant second.

Both sides wanted this war. But as Donald Rumsfeld once sourly noted you have to fight a war with the army you have. In parallel observation, the war you get is never the same or as enterprisingly exciting as the war you wanted. It cannot be otherwise, war is a pas-de-deux of mutual exclusivity. There are few victories in war and even they are all hollow by portion. Consider this when reading the Washington Post's predictable wrapped-in-the-cloak-of-freedom editorial Blaming Democracy washingtonpost.com The fundamental principle at stake in Georgia. Compare and contrast with Andrew Bachevich Russia's payback | csmonitor.com and Fred Kaplan's commentary The Bush administration's feckless response to the Russian invasion of Georgia, - Slate Magazine:. Who are the leveler heads? If we had truly cared about Georgian freedom we could have ensured it with more care and turned aside this Finland-ization. We are left now with what appears as the rebuilding the warm safety of the cold war through negligence and ignorant intent, as though the Global Long war On Terror (Glot) was just too complicated. Talking about freedom is easy and means little. Only what freedom is needed to keep the global factories humming is the freedom that will be received. What is being lost is the idea that there is anything more to the life of the ordinary man that being obedient producers and consumers. I caught a little of Naomi Klein on Democracy Now on Friday I recognize what forms her view of China the Model, the new marketized order and security state China's All-Seeing Eye : Rolling Stone:, the erosion of the standards of human rights. The question is, are we confronting this, looking the other way, or taking notes.

Streets and Roads

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:42:53 GMT

There has been more media attention given to the topic of bicycle commuting, warranting a brief return to the subject. I'll call this post Streets and roads . Latter, perhaps, there will be More roads to follow; in honor of the two books I learned to read with, my mother was a school teacher we had these at home. I was going to call it Bike v Car II : a Mass less critical. The effect of higher cost for driving is changing habits. More people are pulling bicycles out of the basement or garage. People who once only rode for recreation or exercise on weekends are now tentatively putting two wheels down on the road on weekdays, during rush hours. One of these is even my friend Robert who last week was knocking about on Craig's list for a bike to get him from his house to the nearest metro station and back again at the end of the day. A daring move for someone who has commuted previously with a pick-up truck.

There was an extended MetaFilter commentary on some recent Critical Mass rides Wheels on fire, rolling down the road... | MetaFilter. These are occaisional and re-occurring conglomerations of bicycle riders proceeding slowly through major commuting routes during rush hour bringing traffic to a halt. Critical Mass is more of an event than a group, but they have a mission statement of sorts. That roads and road engineering need to be balanced among differing vehicles and transportation modes. The question is whether Critical Mass's AgitProp methods deliver on this message. A lot of these rides proceed in an atmosphere of considerable hostility and tension. Self-indulgent arbitrary abrogation of rights, and right-of-way. This is often regarded (and reported as) a defeating self-righteousness. The MetaFilter thread was full of low and juvenile attitudes of environmental piousness damaging to any attempt to position the movement as principled. Most people would be content to see Critical Mass melt its way through the earth's crust to some place below Seattlest: Seattle Critical Mass Needs to End.

I could say something of my own pedestrian ways, but I may have already tipped my hand here. I've been bicycling a long time: untold decades, eight bikes, zero cars. The MetaFilter thread contained a hotly engaged argument as to whether bicyclists should follow common rules of the road (as though the road were a commons) or rules of individual advantage. The logic, such as there was, revolved around the inability to conserve the energy represented in the momentum of a bike and its wheels at any given moment. Use it or lose it. Red lights and stop signs are only there for suckers and things with engines. This is absurdity, follow the rules of the road. Get inside the realm of expectation. Get over yourself. Be a rational object, or the results will trend toward tragic.

A Reuters article came in on the wake of this taking the form of an overview Cyclists and drivers struggle for harmony | U.S. | Reuters. Statistics and the big picture. How many bike commuters are there, what are the trends? They quote US census figures that less than half of one percent of US workers commute by bicycle, against 77 percent who drive. At first glance it might seem obvious where government should come in on this, but is policy always descriptive, or prescriptive? The article describes the effect of formal and institutional education initiatives and programs mostly related to Seattle's efforts.

They also dealt with road engineering. Some of the things they describe are familiar to me. The right hook, where cars turning right will cut a cyclist off if you come up on the right along the curb. You have to position yourself off their left headlight. This is easier to do on smaller more informal roads, much harder on bigger ones. The fix is to paint in a little area called a bike box just ahead of the intersection stop line. Harder to fix a phenomenon I call a T-block. Often on avenues with multiple lanes in each direction that have a T-intersection, cars in the far lane will continue to proceed through a red light because they consider cars coming through - those turning left will turn into closer lanes. Even with a light turning red it is impossible to tell whether a car will stop or accelerate. I can agree in principle the the notion of rolling stops at stop signs, but would point out there is a difference between rolling through a stop sign at 5 to 10 mph and 20 to 30 mph. I would have traffic engineers know that things like rumble strips accomplish nothing. Drivers simply swerve into the opposite lane to go around them. You don't want to be a cyclist around multiple cars when one of them starts to move in unpredictable ways.

The Reuters article closes with a quote from Scott Bricker executive director of Portland's Bicycle Transportation Alliance."The data shows that as more people ride, the streets get safer." I would add that governments at all levels need to be encouraged to see the streets and roads as not just transportation solutions for cars only.

Drilling

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:45:47 GMT

Oil is becoming an object of the 2008 elections. In particular from the McCain ad I've seen on television Continental Shelf Drilling is being massaged into a wedge issue Oil May Become GOP's 2008 Issue . Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has done something that few Republicans thought possible just a few months ago: given them hope. . I guess they've done their home work and see this issue working for them. But the price of Gas? If it goes up if it comes down who benefits? I can't see how higher prices benefit the McCain campaign, It's likely this is simply spin to consolidate a portion of marginal opinion. Lower prices might favor McCain if it appears natural and not induced by policy trickery. Higher prices can be used to induce fear and concern, but only in the short term until people recall what party has been running the country the last eight years. In any regard for a few days it shook money out of the tree. Mainly from deep and very vested interests Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling..

What's Up with Oil anyway? What are the causes of the current stark increase of the price of oil. The Washington Post attempts to determine this with their favorite tool a giant crushing series Oil Shock This time, it's Different. The question they're concerned with is whether this price shift is permanent and structural or mere volatility caused by concern for the election, possible war with Iran and increasing use of oil as a financial instrument and speculation.

Among the details provided its possible to examine offshore drilling on its merits 3 West Coast governors oppose new offshore oil drilling - Los Angeles Times. The first claim here is to control price and enhance U S security. However offshore drilling available for license now would account for only pennies on the dollar, decades from now. The amount that drilling on the continental coast or in the Alaskan arctic is often discussed in terms of what it could add to American production. The critical comparison is to the less than 1% of U S consumption it constitutes Offshore Drilling: We Have a Choice of Simple Confusion or Outright Lies | Environment | AlterNet. The McCain campaign McCain promotes drilling for oil off US coast - Yahoo! News acknowledging that a congressional vote this week would not flood refineries with price reducing crude this year or next counterd that oil company executives have told the candidate there are fields they could bring into production in the near term. This might even constitute a hundredth part of one percent. The argument for this drilling is essentially nonsense despite its temporary popularity Greenspace | Offshore oil drilling more palatable to Californians | Los Angeles Times. Other points to consider are the notion of this capacity as a strategic reserve, and as Public Relations. There are types and levels of strategic reserve. There is an official strategic reserve. I believe this is mainly what used to be the Navy Reserve, the Teapot Dome fields. Fragile geographies together with difficult geographies make further de-facto natural strategic reserves, best left touched only lightly until greater need necessitates. At the same time having some infrastructure in place and some careful and controlled production from these areas would appear forthright as we expect, and our needs require, other nations do the same.

$4 per gallon gasoline is not the petro-economies endgame. It is simply a sign post as we move into an era of total global use, where asia and south asia begin to consume oil at the rates of the western economies. And we begin to catch glimpse of the end reaches of an oil driven world. The current price surge is mostly due to low capital investment (exploration and equipment) during previous 10-15 years of low and stable prices. Otherwise it could accommodate current increased use. This has left the industry behind a power curve. There are issues here as to where the center of expertise and capital is located. In the end this is a rectifiable matter. For the United States by whatever policy it is key to have an ordered and methodical approach to US oil exploration and subsequent exploitation. This is opposed to crisis driven Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Even the best intention of offshore drilling amounts to no more than keeping the price at a point where things do not change. This was Cheney's rebuttal to those questioning why alternative energy and conservation was not part of his energy task force ("we won't be doing that"), It was our message to the Saudis in the 1970's: if the price of oil keeps going up the people will find other ways and means and the habit will be broken.

Another thing I think of at this point is where are the Green Entrepreneurs? Beyond small businessmen or women getting in touch with their inner tree hugger What Will Drive the Energy Innovation Revolution? - Dot Earth - Climate Change and Sustainability - New York Times Blog. Where is the emerging class of Start-Up CEO's and investors, the corporations, the fortunes - Bill Gates sized fortunes, forming around alternate energy solutions and the future? Where is the knowledge base, the know how, the Sustainability MBA's to guide this money. Where are the markets for this way to wealth.

The answer are the Petro-Chemists. By which I refer to the group of extremely wealthy men, technologists, apologists, and their associated political apparatchiks. As a class resistant to change. While innovation, conservation and alternative energy development may be critical for the nation. It doesn't pay or privilege those in the conventional fossil fuel industries. It likely does pay them to gather up rights and permits to resources even if they can't deal with them yet. They doubt their ability to compete or stay in the vanguard of the controlling wealth of the world. They use their existing leverage to co-opt and stifle change.

This is the era of peaked oil. This was implicitly the point of all those Washington Post column inches. While consumption and production have not yet hit their highest level. And the point where we have pumped and refined through to the median of what oil the earth will give up probably has not occurred yet. We have entered the era where that will occur. An era where the size of oil based economies will have closed frontiers, measurable limits, and within these, ever increasing competition for remaining resources.

All periods of history have organizing theory. Many now put forward the ideas and outlook of the late University of Maryland professor Julian Simon, ( Julian Lincoln Simon - Wikipedia). Guiding light of various camps of anti-Malthusians: Those who believe that scarcity and environmental degradation are simply non-issues. Markets react to scarcity with higher prices, this revenue provides opportunity for innovation and solutions emerge. As long as whatever famines, wars, upheavals, genocide and clashes of civilizations such as exist fall short of catastrophic, and are far away. They are are content to believe the system works fine. Even taken narrowly in the realm of manufacturing and production. If political or economic power can strip complete and true cost from price, if externalities can be marginalized, masked, those concerned attacked. The technologists have not served mankind or human wisdom. Simon was brilliant (see the Wired profile of him from a few years ago The Doomslayer - Wired), but he was a contrarian and iconoclast; the truth is never as easily obtained as conventional wisdom turned on its head.

The recent news that a British channel 4 documentary was found in breach of OfCom [which I presume stands for, Office of Communication, a UK government entity similar to our FCC] rules forms a case in point BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate documentary 'broke rules':. A cynical set piece of obfuscation it exists to honor the notion that simple opposition presented loudly can change perceived reality. Despite presentation of information indifferent to facts or accuracy the filmmakers were merely warned and not fined. This is the problem with the Lomborgists in general. Their only message is "nothing is happening, and even if something is, concentration of capital can fix it better than any human planning. So far their energy is expounded solely on the former. This is going into the future with one hand tied behind our backs.

Fort Reno

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:35:41 GMT

The Fort Reno Free Summer Concert Series slipped my mind this year Fort Reno 2008 | Schedule. I didn't even think of it until just last week. Looking at the schedule I have to admit, I don't know any of these bands. This is my fault not theirs. Well - the Boom Oranutangs who have already played this year and played last year as well. They I know are Wilson High people and schoolmates of my niece Nicole C.

The tag line at the bottom of the pages "Mostly Arsenic-free since 2008". This is reference to an improbable story from earlier in the year that Fort Reno and the adjoining Wilson High and Deal Jr. high fields where soggy with arsenic. It was going to eat through your shoes up into your body and kill you dead New Soil Tests Show Safe Arsenic Levels. Apparently; though, all a false alarm caused by new high tech surveillance methods Norton's Fort Reno Park Community Meeting.

The Fort Reno concerts were recalled to me by my co-worker Jeremy who posited Fort Reno as a pastoral version of Baltimore's Whartscape during a discussion of that. In passing he mentioned The Apes as only non Dischord DC area band he could recall by name. It turned out they were on the bill for that same night. WhartScape which took place last weekend Whartscape 2008: The Aftermath - Information Leafblower I had never heard of before. What it seems to be is 3 days, a couple of alleys and nearly every indie band between Severna Park and Coney island WHAM CITY: WHARTSCAPE 2008. But not for some reason the Wilderness or even Lord Dog Bird. Whartscape is the Alternative communities answer (counterpart) to Baltimore's more mainstream ArtScape. This is at least its second year Whartscape Music Festival | Pitchfork (last years in Pitchfork).

Looking over the remainder of the Fort Reno Schedule. One act catches my eye: Kid Congo Powers . The Kid Congo Powers, from the Cramps, Nick Cave, and also from one of my very favorite bands, the Gun Club? It seems to be. This could interesting.

Under the theory that you've got to name your poison if you want it (arsenic?). I leave you with a link to the Sonics (the Sonics) doing their song Strychnine: The Sonics - Strychnine.

Some folks like water,
Some folks like wine,
But I like a taste,
Of straight strychnine
-- Sonics. Strychnine, 1965

Eaves of Heaven

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:47:12 GMT

Andrew Pham's new book Eaves of Heaven is out (his previous was Catfish and Mandala). I guess it's been out for a while, I'm not sure. Mir at Dim Sum Diaries had mentioned it earlier. The Washington Post is reviewing it for tomorrows paper week Fall from Grace - washingtonpost.com The New York Times did last week Book Review - 'Eaves of Heaven,' by Andrew X. Pham - NYTimes.com). While the campus book store doesn't have either of his books, McKeldin library where I work does have the latter book. I was able to check it out and start reading it. When I finish it I'll have to come back and say more

The book is a curious hybrid form: Memoigraphy I think. A history of his father's family through generations. A biography of his father's life, orphaned, at an earlier age told narratively in his father's voice.

I know my friend Trân's family forms a similar story of similarly aged people. Trân once told me her father (and his brother) were also orphans; building a life in uncertain times. Losing everything in the wars, beginning again. When she told me this she had two separate scanned pictures of her father, and maternal grandmother. She was endeavoring to put these together in the same frame. Either physically, or photoshop them together if she could manage it. It was a gift for her father. She indicated that her grandmother meant a great deal to her father. Further she recalled a period when she was young, when they lived in her home. "So this is a women who held you when you were a little girl," I asked. "Held me?" Trân echoed, "No." She was not a woman who held and comforted small children. "You look a little like her," I offered, but she was not a woman Trân thought she looked like. Looking at that picture again my thoughts ran to a play I once saw: La Casa de Bernarda Alba.

When I had gotten the book out of the shelves I found Trân dis-inclined to acknowlege either the book or the author particularly, even as I held it in my hand. As she did Andrew Pham's last book, which another co-worker Yeri did read and like. There is much in the Vietnamese experience which is private I think. Private trauma private fears and unconsoled aggrievements. These are not to be discussed with outsiders.

I think about it still, because I think about Trân a great deal. For emigres, forced choice emigres, Vietnamese and others, who left the land of their birth because of calamity or oppression. There is a tendency to look back upon an idealized homeland. In this aspect it will be the fount of all possible virtue. It will be traditional unchanging perfect. It will represent all against the turning perspectives and shadows of the past for the 1rst, 1.5, and 2nd generations. The 1.5 generation, a recognized and discussed group The Vietnamese American 1.5 generation : stories of war, revolution, flight, and new beginnings [WorldCat.org], I believe refers to those born in Vietnam, but who grew up in America, such as someone I knew in college, Hoa Nguyen, who came to the United States when she was three. I imagine a 1.25 category for Trân who grew up in Vietnam and did not come here and become a citizen with her family until she was in her twenties. This is the work I think that Andrew Pham takes up with his writing. To tell a story. To synthesis an understanding, a perspective, greater than any he held when he started.

There are four worlds of the Vietnamese living in the west. The emigre community close knit and protective. The joined nation, here the U S. But there are extensive communities in France, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere as well. The remembered homeland. The burden this is expected to carry is too great for any coherant concept of a place. What it loses in concreteness, slipping away in so many sepia-toned pictures of Saigon, perhaps it gains as argument. Against all this the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: roiling hungry locked down. The country - the authoritarian government - that modern (free) marketeers adore. Reliable, free from regulation or the demands of labor Corporate love for communism | csmonitor.com. Globalizing engagement, many are begining to realize, is a long term, not a short term process. In the short term authortarian governments are only strengthened by investment and the deals they cut. Greater liberty is only gradually extracted by a combination of increasing material well being and increasing awareness information and of possibilities that accompany that.

There is no level on which I can really understand the experience of individuals like Andrew Pham or my friend Trân. I have nothing like it in my life. But in addition to opening a window into other worlds, one thing reflecting on this does is cast a little clearer the Massachussetts in my mind. Not exactly the same as the one up north of Rhode Island, which I left thirty years ago. A vision of a questioning contrarian place, of a nation, that is becoming still and does not exist yet to be traded upon by those desiring comfort, safety security, and wealth over freedom.

Spend a Penny

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:45:51 GMT

You have to spend money to make money, so they say. There are times I doubt some in the newspaper business believe this. For years it's been apparent the distribution people for the Washington Post know when school is not in session at the University. UMD on these occasions experiences no-delivery days where you can walk from one side of campus to the other and not find a paper anywhere. I don't subscribe, but I am a 6 day a week newstand buyer. I've commented on this before so I won't belabor the point. It seems this forms a metaphor of sorts. Their fear of not making a sale leads them not to even try. The newspaper business is in a defensive crouch they can't get out of.

I was nursing this grievance earlier when I saw that Ann Marie Lipinski editor of the Chicago Tribune Chicago Editor Quits as Tribune Cuts Deeper - washingtonpost.com, and David Hiller publisher of the Los Angeles Times Tribune's Second Shoe Drops: 'L.A. Times' Publisher Quits David Hiller , both in Sam Zell's Tribune corporation immersed in the middle of mass newsroom cuts, either fled or were rousted from that company. The Baltimore Sun is also in that family Baltimore Sun staffers applied for buyouts. This set off another round of bemoaning the death of journalism Poynter Online - Romenesko:. The idea the Tribune's executives seem to have is the remaining writers will simply produce more copy, because all column inches are equal No Joy in Zellville | American Journalism Review:. I seem to recall that either this set of new newspaper company owners or a previous set were making pronouncements on privileging (vapid) localism over critical national and international coverage. That this is what a paper like the LAT or Baltimore Sun ought to be doing. Others will handle news from other places. This leads only to narrowing awareness, manufactured consent, and giving elites a freer hand to conduct the people's business in their own interest. That is the effect, whether intentional or not. It is a fools errand to believe that ever continuing rounds of cuts and layoffs will restore newspapers to relevance. Burning down their open web-content sites as though the only true value of a paper lay in the rolls of flattened wood-pulp on the loading dock and not in their newsroom and bureau staffs. It's all luddism and tunnel vision, a reflexive defensive crouch.

The advertising models for web content admittedly are horrendous. Existing web ads are too small, too busy and too amateurish. As yet they also are mostly in only weak and marginal categories. Another thing I think I see which is puzzling is rotary serves of ads, which means you often can't go back to a page and see a given ad a second time even if you wanted to. Frankly I suspect the true value of paper-based advertising is overestimated, and that of web advertising underestimated. On this balance (it is what advertisers are willing to pay) web-available copy is killing the business. Offhand I'd say that what pays the bills for a city newspaper are color supplements and coupons for local big retail, that and classifieds. These are destinations in print, if done right and with added value they could be destinations on-line.

Papers like the Washington Post have shown some understanding of the need for a digital content distribution which preserves the crafted balance of the physical entity. This through animals like e-Replica | Washington Post a high end proprietary pdf reader delivering a digital componented version of the print edition on subscription. Together with all ad copy and those lovely full page political ads: Lockheed, Boeing, the NRA, or even the ones the United Church of Christ occasionally runs which otherwise you never see online.

The needs of the user are paramount though. I only desire to read one paper full through. The Washington Post is the only paper where I would consider digital subscription. For other news needs I take a citing and pointing approach. Being able to put URLs in a web log entry is optimum, though I could quote and cite to lesser (and more didactic) effect. The idea is a virtual library reading room, the enabling technology is RSS feeds and other aggregators. I view this technology as like a personalized clipping service, like the "early bird news" I remember from working in the Pentagon. One thing, newspaper and other journalistic entities should not presume to do is get in-between the user, citizens, and what they try to do with the information they are given.

Art and Commerce

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:32:16 GMT

A public art installation along New Hampshire Ave. between Piney Branch and Southampton Rds

A couple of weeks ago as I left my apartment and headed off to work I encountered some of the physical plant people from my apartment complex using a high pressure spray washer to clean a concrete retaining wall near my place. It needed it. It was dirty and a bit of an eyesore. Still an odd occurrence considering normally it was the county that paid their indifferent attention to that particular spot. The next day nearly the entire crowd of employees from the complex were out at the same spot painting it into two shiny and very bright sections of color. [In the first picture above it is is in the blue section right where it bends around the curve where two years ago my bike slipped out on some wet leaves and crashed. I tore up my right shoulder rotator cuff - took a year for that to heal.] A day later as I set out a small truck was parked across the street and some people were the laying out mystery objects on the grass. Sorting and organizing large flat brightly colored panels, under the direction of someone with an arts council air to them.

Coming back up New Hampshire Ave. from the bike path nine hours later, and suspecting the weeks events now were not unrelated. I was able to see the installation for what it was. Free cut painted sheets of aluminum, dozens of them all different, like decorative street signs, nailed tightly to the formerly bland concrete retaining wall. Forming into an enormous integrated mural. It was very impressive. I kept an eye on the newspaper and tv news for a couple days to seeking any hint of what this was about, but nothing came (nor has anything, in the english language press at least). I began to wonder where it was that murals came from.

One day, about a week later, some men came by early one morning and set a large tent on the grass right outside my front door. They set up a PA system, rows of chairs, and soon the yard and tent were filled with a hundred or more impeccably dressed people listening to multiple speeches and clapping politely. This went on for more than an hour. After the speeches; tours were led down to the installation on a partially roped off New Hampshire ave. Some who appeared to be politicians circled the remaining crowd like sharks. I felt vindicated that a real dedication had been planned for this embankment of public art. Which I now know was the two county turning point mural project. The art works name appears to simply be the Turning Points Mural, as nearly as I can tell. I see all this required $100,000 in fundraising to make it happen. A number of groups seem to have put this together: a program called CSAFE (Collaborative Supervision and Focused Engagement) togther with the Montgomery and Prince Georges Co. police departments. The mural was physically created by a group called Arts on the Block with the Maryland Multicultural Youth Centers and the P.G. Co. Arts Council: Arts on the Block - Two County Turning Point Mural Project. With further assistance from Northwest Park Apts. and something called the Weed and Seed community program. In one of the pictures here the short women in the yellow shirt in the mid ground seems to have been a key person on the art end of things, the women in the black jacket and silver skirt in the foreground on the administrative end. You can see the window to my apartment in the building just behind them. It wasn't until I had worked my way around to the front of the tent that I saw they had free food. The world turns but once, I thought, and took up a free ice cold Mountain Dew.

Grand Opening of the Bestway Supermercado in the Riggs Road plaza.

Less heralded was the reopening of a grocery store about a mile in the other direction this last week at the Riggs rd. Plaza. It used to be a Safeway, it was where I shopped for many years. Until the day they emptied the place put a lock on the door and walked away. Eighteen months gone now. Into Safeway's abandoned space, the Bestway SuperMercado has come. It is as if a Mexico City grocery store had dropped neatly out of the air into Adelphi. Many products, are spanish, everything is labeled in spanish, and everyone there speaks spanish. Still I was able to find everything I need in all the few and spare catagories of groceries I trade in. My ham sandwiches are now made with bread that comes from a little white teddy bear named Bimbo.

It's hard to say which of these two events is more critical. I still follow claims for the transformative aspect of art. The signs and signals of aesthetic effect. Calls for renewal in it's presence. Marching lightly along the watch path of cause and effect. [Here note I am just simply reciting the title of an old Mission of Burma Ep. Signals Calls and Marches for my own amusment.]. However as lemony-limey orange and grape-like as the mural is, it is an atmospheric nourishment. It will be an anchor of community morale, a point of enduring pride. The Bestway will have two-for-one sales on Honeydew melons available on my way home from work. It is also good to have local neighborhood grocery store again

Activate

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:23:06 GMT

The spring term of the Supreme Court wrapped up last week. Most commentary in general or within discussion of specific cases seemed at pains to find balance. Seeing this, my immediate question was "So is the court in balance, or on the verge of chaos?"

I only pay some attention to the court. There is no reward for the layman to pay more attention than that. Specific cases arise out of specific facts and are decided by applications of specific points of the law. Try as it might American jurisprudence does not proceed by world turning philosophical pronouncements. The laws are, as well, an intricate and detailed dialogue of closely reasoned arguments that in some if not most cases extend back a hundred years or more. A single undergraduate constitutional law course does not get you a seat at the table. In the end; however, the law must embody a common sense, and survive common sense reviews of its workings to prevent the law drowning and perishing in a sea of arcania.

The seeming over-all balance of decisions in the last term, was the result of a balance of votes equaling a balance of decisions, There was a fluctuation of deciding votes which belies the uniformity and rigidity of the courts conservative segment A Win by McCain Could Push a Split Court to Right and graphic The Supreme Court Term - washingtonpost.com. The Scalia/Thomas/Alito/Roberts bloc formed a closed and hermetically sealed conservative core. They do not have membership in the middle ground, in any dialogue. All compromise occurs elsewhere on the court. The court in fact is at a tipping point, the appointment of single even mainstream conservative to the court and an almost unprecedentedly reactionary Court would emerge quickly from this present cusp.

A few of the more contentious cases stuck with me. Plus one legislative issue, aspects of which are likely to come before the Court eventually. First Detainee rights: Boumediene v. Bush Justices Say Detainees Can Seek Release - washingtonpost.com:. This one led to Scalia hurling thunderbolts of fear in dissent. The problem was entirely of our own making. The history of the war on terror as been marked by a disinclination towards formality, with a positive inclination towards executive fiat and secrecy. A disinclination to place them in any existing category of status or craft a new one. NPR interviewed Benjamin Wittes recently Book Ponders How To End Detainees' Legal Limbo : NPR , author of Law and the long war : the future of justice in the age of terror which examines this issue in detail [see also the review in Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs - Terror and the Law - Curtis A. Bradley.] Neither prisoners of war, incarcerated in uniform held to the end of national controlled hostilities, or citizens belonging and subject to some nations law, to which they ought be repatriated. Even (more accurately more problematically) individuals who have injured U S citizens, or property for which international agreement (treaty UN mandate etc) allows American legal action to apply. That they did none of this made it a matter of US law, Made it a matter of US due process. Made it a matter of US law's notions of the natural rights of the Accused. The right to see the accuser and hear the evidence, and not be confronted with the blank wall of interested secrecy and cloaked assertion. Made it matter of our own integrity before the Laws. The fundamental nature of due process this idea of anglo-american justice leads in the direction of universal extensively. Only a bush league poverty of truth and legitimacy stand for limitation.

Telecom Immunity is another of these topics of executive privilege. Here the FISA stuatue: H.R. 3773 a bill in congress passed in the House currently before the Senate. The basic problem with this immunity specified in the second section of this bill (title ii) is that breaks the connection between action and consequence. It is a substantial moral hazard. It dissipates the pressure to disclose or confess when the bright red lines are crossed Why the new wiretapping law is a lot worse than you think. - By Patrick Radden Keefe - Slate Magazine. It would be best to balance latitude with signatures and the courage of ones convictions. An informal rule that ought to apply is to allow the executive a political latitude perhaps generous latitude close to the latitude they crave (Wittes book also speaks on this point). But not place blanket grants of immunity into the nations laws that would extend that latitude to private citizens, random government officials or corporations. Avoiding law through simple national security letters and the like. This only creates governance by arbitrary and unpromulgated application of law. It fundamentally cuts the bond between the people and government. Without the threat of accountability or punishment, no-ones conscience prods them forward into the light. Arrangements among the pillars of power abound. Neither the people nor their representatives learn of actions in order to judge their need effectiveness legitimacy or malfeasance. These are exceptionally powerful tools the security apparatus ask for here. If the President, or designee feels a need on going beyond the boundaries prescribed by the existing FISA law, they ought have to conviction to stand up to penalty, whether criminal political or social opprobrium. The view of the establishment and this seems to include the Obama campaign at the moment Telecom Amnesty Foes Lobby Obama Using Obama Tech | Threat Level from Wired.com is give the administration the bill they want or the administration will keep breaking the law and any law that follows the fracture. It is not theirs to hand over inalienable rights that casually.

The court made a ruling in just the past few weeks on Exxon Shipping v. Baker Justices Slash Damages for Exxon Oil Spill:. This is the Exxon Valdez case from twenty years ago. The court has down-warded 500 million dollars against reckless despoilment of Prince William sound What Does Exxon Owe Alaskans? 1994: Billion; 2006: 5 Billion; Today: .5 Billion - Dot Earth - Climate Change and Sustainability - New York Times Blog (I have a little Narcocorridos in the works which I will call, of course, Viva Valdez). The Robert's court in an affect of principle turns punitive damages from pain to petty cash. ExxonMobile's ( ExxonMobil - Powerset) revenues for 2007 were $404.5 billion dollars. There is a message here as well, for those championing offshore drilling particularly the mysterious right wing campaign for immediate offshore drilling in Florida. This involves Cuba with either Vietnam or China's assistance slant drilling into Florida waters to steal US oil. No real sign of that. But for the care the drilling companies will show for your waters fisheries and beaches; this is your message in a bottle.

The case District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2nd Amendment case Justices Reject D.C. Ban On Handgun Ownership - washingtonpost.com was perhaps the strangest of all. At first I didn't think so, private citizen gun ownership has come to be regarded as an conventional right. It was never in doubt what this court was going to do to the District of Columbia's gun law. At the same time the exact meaning of the second amendment was never a settled issue, Its been argued about and in the same terms since I heard it argued in a school debate in seventh grade. The second amendment is a classic example of when opposing rights and desires collide. The desire for the comfort power and immanent settlement of firearms, against the right for safety and freedom from the ease and ecstatic violence of automatic weapons. What I found odd was that the majority opinion simply read the opening clause out of the constitution. It was inconvenient it exists to moderate the whole which would have lead to a less than absolute right so it just disappeared. What precedent that existed disappeared. If in the future DC's shootings escalate, and guns in America become anything but "well-regulated" this will not inconvenience Justice Scalia. In fact I don't think inconvenience is really the word at all.

As people begin to look over this term the conception that this is in many ways a deeply activist court insinuating itself into various realms of governance and placing its opinions on top. From the conservative wing we get bullying backfilling justifications. There is a hard put center and essentially no progressive vote on the court. The argument in Crawford v. Marion county election board was close to giggling nonsense. They claim strict constructing when that argument will deliver, clear words of the legislator, or obvious intent of legislator as they see it when that will. Law is ever a straight line from them to their prevailing opinion. This is a court that increasing is taking charge and reorganizing American law for the right's benefit.

George Best

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 03:57:54 GMT

This is the time of year I call the summer radio doldrums. Indie or college radio wise - the stuff I've listened to the last 25 years - few bands release new material in the summer. It seems a good moment to review highlights from the spring. First of these was Ted Leo's improv performance of "A Bottle of Buckie" during the WFMU marathon. Thinking about it more than the previous times I've heard that song. I thought "I have the rough idea here, but what is a bottle of Buckie?" Buckfast Tonic Wine! Made by monks, drunk by Scots. A cure for all what ails you. Seemingly not available here in the USA.

At some point subsequent to that I happened across a description of something called Bovril. Not even remotely similar Bovril - Wikipedia. But somehow it struck me as a product in an allied catogory: Tonics and health foods that aren't. Bovril nearly as I can make out is a salt beef extract in a nice liquid yeast suspension. Beef Tea they call it. Good in a mug, good on your toast. It was developed by John Lawson Johnston, a Scotsman, for the French Army during the Franco-Prussian wars, liquid beef they called it. By 1890 it was incorported as the Bovril company and was based mainly in Argentina. The name was from Bovine + Vril. The latter taken from an elixer in a novel. Johnston's son and thereafter, became the Lord Luke Johnstons of Pavenham, a hereditory peerage, for their contribution to civilization. The 2nd Lord Johnston merged Bovril with the Marmite company. Both were sold to Unilever sometime in the 1990's. Vril was the mysterious liquid in Bulwer-Lytton's 1870 novel The Coming Race. Edward Bulwer-Lytton may be best known as the originator of the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night"; the opening line of his novel, Paul Clifford. Vril was the bath, tonic medicine and food of the Vril-Ya, superhuman beings living in chambers beneath the surface of the earth. It was one of first science fiction books predating many of Verne's, and has a bit of a history to it . The whole subject is a real rabbit warren of weird. If only Buckie and Bovril were sold at my local Safeway, I'd buy them every week. A tonic for the troops.

Another high point of spring time radio was when WFMU dj Joe Belock played one Count Five song three times during a single show. Reminding me only of a time back probably in 1976 or 1977 when I heard a dj on WBCN (a commercial station) played Aerosmith's "Dream On" three times in a row. I quote: "Oh Wow... I think I need to play that one more time..." That was album rock radio back when it meant something.

My fall-back, if radio goes down the tubes, is TV commercial music. Sometimes this sort of thing sticks with me sometimes it doesn't There's good music all over TV commercials and very diverse too. The trick is to identify it know it and who does it, and complete the Re-Conquest of Cool. Tangentially I wish that Jamie Lamm TV show "Fearless Music" aired in DC. I only get to see it at the beach. I've heard the Clash for Nissan, their cover of Toots and the Maytals "Pressure Drop". Sometime ago if I'm not mistaken Wilco was selling Volkswagen. Kings of Leon, who used to sell Volkswagens, I think are selling Fords now with their song "Red Morning Light" which, I admit I like. I can't fully recall the car commerical (morphing dessert landscape etc.) that had some lovely ambient electronica going on. I wasn't paying attention. Now, if they had been advertising bicycles...

I see that the Wedding Present have a new album out. Now there's a reason to listen to the radio - I'd like to see somebody play that. There are plenty of reasons to listen to the radio. Back at the beginning of the year I heard a couple of good songs by a band called Starlight Desperation. I liked what I heard, then people stopped playing them. Same thing with the Los Angeles outfit Dengue Fever albeit a different style: worldbeat jazz and 60's Cambodian pop rock. Really nice song crafting. I heard a song called Caroline. "Holy Yard Truama", I thought, "now that's some genuine psych garage rock right there". Turned out to be a band called Pierced Arrows. This band more or less used to be the band Dead Moon. The guitarist, Fred Cole, was in the 60's garage band the Lollipop Shoppe. Some might remember their song "You must be a Witch" (was that on the Savage Seven soundtrack). I used to play that when I was a college radio dj. One that I missed getting on my end of year list last year was Caribou's "Melody Day" I was reminded of it through the FourTet remix. I like the video for that song; possibly the most Canadian thing I've ever seen. You can find your own link to that, but I'll give you this one - I believe this is the singer's father: Results for 'au:V P Snaith' [WorldCat.org].

What ground me up a little was that people are not playing more Thao Nguyen (and the GetDownStayDown Band), a Falls church VA native who has a new record out on Kill Rock Stars. Her songs compare well with Laura Veirs and people play plenty of that. At least I have it in my iTunes. See the video's up at KRS killrockstars (she was the subject of a KRS vodcast also). See them live this summer in Boston New York and DC, 12, 13 and 14 August respectively, begining of the month tour dates for Southern California. Be carefull though, she has a Bag of Hammers. Another pleasant surprise this spring was the new album "Liars and Prayers" from the Thalia Zedek band who has been in indie bands such as Uzi and the Dangerous Birds since the early '80s. It's good, better than good. its crunchy. I admit an attempt to look up any performance on youtube, led to me spending an hour watching Thalia Sodi videos.

I believe, due to the current high cost of aviation fuel, all scheduled live performances of the Helicopter Quartet by Karl Stockhausen Helikopter-Streichquartett - Wikipedia are grounded. Best sit back with a Bovril bagel a Buckie, comfort food for your inner hooligan, and read a couple of chapters of Borstal Boy (with the TV on in the background).

BvC (bike v. car)

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 03:16:28 GMT

There was a Christian Science Monitor article on hybrid envy last week. This is the envy of your friend or acquaintance who has gone out and got a hybrid-engine vehicle. Hybrid Envy is chic, the article questions, but not bike envy? As the author states:

...During the month that I drove it, three different people complimented me. And yet, during the seven years we have been carless, only one person has complimented me. Hybrid cars get compliments - why not my bike? | csmonitor.com

He shouldn't hold his breath on this. Oh here's a word that ought to be out there in someone's dictionary: prius-pism. Use it however you like.

It got me thinking; though, there are mixed sensibilities at play when people consider the bicycling communities: commuter biking versus messenger biking versus the spandex circus. How people see the first is colored by the latter two. Kamikaze riders who have elicited the slim advantage and economic niche for bike couriers into a personal and impenetrable law of the street. As well recreational riders whose sense of entitlement, probably carries over from their $350 rims to whatever overwrought motor vehicles they actually travel to work in. The commuting biker has to prepare careful negotiations and endure mediation of their choice and ethical stance to get it accepted as a matter of principle at all. I don't drive. I don't own a car. I never have. This is a normative choice which I press against perception of habit or simply 'my way' of being. I weigh getting a car, what type of car I might get, against my need for a car, against continuing without one, all the time. I wouldn't have anyone think I don't. For me it's an old choice but not a settled one. You can't place much stock on gaining credence for what you do, just do it.

I saw a faint thread running from this to Slate's review of the Planet Green network The dreadful Planet Green network. - By Troy Patterson - Slate Magazine:. The author, Troy Patterson, declared it an "embarrassment to the earth" and dismissed it as another lifestyle conspicuously consumed. The environmental publication Grist responded with piqued reaction, but fails to deal with Patterson's centrally placed showcasing of the Planet Green's own general manager calling it "eco-tainment," as quoted in the New York Times A not-so-rosy review of Planet Green | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist:.

I don't get cable, so this affair will smoothly bypass me. But I'm not as inclined to regard such a channel that harshly. There are stages of going green; which is a consciousness raising process. Affirmation of green as a good, observance of some primary conservation efforts, and finally the one-thing-barrier to true observance of green living. The one-thing barrier is simply a reference to whatever one thing each of us has as individuals where we draw the line and declare that our notion of practicality wins out. In aggregate this keeps any useful green on the other side of acceptance. This will be a multi generational struggle occurring across the American ideological divide. This is a caution towards those who would position green only as a progressive issue, or cease to care about it.

Meanwhile in another green world I, and thousands like me, continue to negotiate the traffic engineered streets. A Salon Table-talk piece: outlines the raw feelings on the streets The wheel thing | Salon: . That piece's genesis is this Chicago Tribune story Bicyclist who struck SUV door and was hit by passing vehicle dies of injuries -- chicagotribune.com:. Bicyclers are increasingly apprehensive about commuting on the streets at all. I ride along the Northwest Branch Creek bike path to work in the summer (which however is owned by M.S. xiii), and dread the winters when I must keep to the streets. For pedestrians and bikers the streets are getting wider to cross, narrower to ride on. The walk lights shorter, the yellow trap bigger, and with right turn lanes the cars never really stop coming. One thing I am always aware of on the road is that those in vehicles carry an semi-conscious assumption that there is an operative hierarchy of weight and horsepower on the road into which bicycles scarcely figure. In the automotive world of the United States, the world of carbon tire-prints; less is more, so they say, but none means nothing.

- - -

Addendum: In my inbox today (18 Jun 08) was an email summary of a new University PR web log. Their idea is if you're not reading it and haven't pinned up the RSS feed, they're still going to email it to you. Information not only wants to be free it wants to insist upon itself. In this case it was worth the drum beat. There was a good article in it on the Universities initiatives on commuting to work by bicycle Between the Columns, University of Maryland » Making Bicycling a More Popular, Safer Option:. They even are thinking of setting up a committee. Public bureaucracies shed meeting bodies like a cat sheds fur, but they claim this has improved conditions at other universities. There is an accompanying video segment which includes scenes from roads which are part of my daily travel. Where the rider/narrator goes under a bridge, that is the underside of New Hampshire ave. directly ahead of him will be the underside of Piney Branch. This is about three miles from campus and quite close to where I live. A moment later in the video he is on campus heading in the other direction. A bit further he is filmed riding by the Architecture building and Prienkart field house. This is the exact spot I was when I realized the women I was checking out on the opposite sidewalk was actually Trân.

Lunch

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 03:45:18 GMT

There was a morning one day last spring; I was biking into work. I work in a library at a large public university so invariably this involves emerging into a roiling bustle of people as I get on campus. On the other side of the street I saw a beautiful women, lovely and graceful. She was in plain fact hot. "I never get to know women like that" I thought. However; as I passed and glanced over I realized it was Huyen Trân. For the remaining fifth of a mile, till I got to the bike rack and locked up, this gave me a few things to think over.

One thing I've never done in the seven or so years I've been writing to this web log is write about food. I know I eat. Well, indirectly I know this. The government's height to weight ratio scale advises me, for the data points at hand, that I am in no imminent danger of starving. I thought perhaps I could write a little about lunch which is really my favorite meal. More particularly by way of illustrating contrast, some of my lunches against some of Trân's

A word about my lunches. If asked in the late afternoon all I could really tell you is that it was probably ham and cheese, or tuna fish, maybe hummus (if I bought lunch out at the food coop that day), but I would be fairly certain it was a sandwich, because it's always a sandwich.

Now let's consider five Viet Girl lunches. These are not recipes, I don't know enough about food to set down recipes, more breve descriptive statements based on observation and some restrained inquiry. To the ends of my limited ability to even describe such things. However, I can assure you these all appeared smelled and tasted completely wonderful. Concerning containers and heating, generally it was her preference not to use microwave reheating but to set a tupperware or gladware type container into a larger one of very hot water. For details beyond my notes you will have to ask her.

Rice (generally ordinary white rice often but not always with soy sauce as accompaniment); mustard greens, a pickeled egg.
Rice; lettuce & celery, ground fish, with fish sauce and lemon.
Rice; pulled squid (thin, perforated almost sheet-like in appearance), with red pepper, lettuce.
Rice; thin tenderloin roast beef, mint, in a thin lemon, garlic & red onion broth (the beef boiled briefly in water salt lemon, skimed, squeezed, dried, then introduced to the broth.) salted and peppered to taste.
Rice; shredded pork, a thin cabbage soup or maybe it was a stew.
Bonus round: Rice; a little ground pork, a green onion, with a single, but very large goose egg. Obtained, I was told in Germantown, near Gaithersburg.

As rice seemed to be the unifying principle to Trân's lunches. Some thoughts on rice are appropriate here. What is rice? Rice - Wikipedia. Rice is a simple grass. There are two (domesticated) species: Oryza Sativa, and Oryza glaberrima. There are three types of the former which constitute most of what we know as rice: Indica, Sinica-Japonica, Javonica. These break down by how they are grown. In a field nourished only by rain water is dry rice. Or dependent on irrigation systems or river flooding and immersed in water for most of their growing cycle is wet rice. This rice is most common and is of traditionally higher yield, but natively rice is a marsh grass and evolved to take in nutrients in a water bourne environment.

What meaning has Rice though? At one point Nina, another coworker who is from the Philippines, happened by, "Rice" she said, "My husband likes rice - everyday - I do not like it so much." Trân glanced up at her and briefly a look passed over her face as if some grand apostasy had appeared before her (it was very similar to the look she gave me when she learned I was protestant). She declined to respond. Rice is food. A synomyn complete in itself for the entire idea of nourishment and health. One might almost say Rice is life. If that seems an over-statement, that did not stop the FAO from giving a book that title a few years ago Rice is life : International Year of Rice 2004 and its implementation [WorldCat.org] ). Even Rice Almanac lets you know from the cover how it feels Rice almanac : source book for the most important economic activity on earth [WorldCat.org]. In marketing rice: purity and wholeness a perfection of appearence are interwoven completely in the trade. The milling process involves cleaning pearling buffing and polishing steps (with talc) before rice is presented for grading. The best rice is unbroken and jewel-like in appearance. Rice is the embodiment of culture, ways of life. The measure of seasons and days. In the transplanting of the seedlings, a hand-measure of aesthetic and orderly line across the land.

Rice exemplfies systematic agriculture, the effect of technology old and new. Rice was a tricky crop and required study of weather, nature and accumulation of knowledge to master. In the last few hundred years it was understood that rice wanted civil engineering; vast manufactured irrigation systems extending hundreds of square miles in order to flourish. This led to rice's triumphant rise from luxury crop; desired and with ancient pedigree, but not dominant. Not widely available at affordable cost - to an international traded commodity and dietary staple. It is with this over arching idea that Latham opens his overview of current rice practices Rice : the primary commodity [WorldCat.org]. This is a small and somewhat recent book on rice. The big book on rice is Grist's Rice [WorldCat.org]. The last steps in this story are the green revolution of the 60's and 70's, building on the now reliable crops that irrigation systems engendered. And establishment of all-critical milling operations closer to regional centers of production. So that surplus rice could be made a commodity, traded and earn money for the farmer. Since Latham wrote his book, which I read most of, Vietnam has assumed one of the top positions in international rice trade and even has a web site dedicated to just that Vietnamese Rice | Home.

Success brings challenge, though. The rate of ever-increasing yields is tapering off, the rate of world population increase is not. Demand and price are up considerably particularly this year. There is increasing fear that rice could become unaffordable to some dependant on it. This has placed a critical focus on Catholic Charities such as Operation Rice Bowl. In Asia nearly all cultivatable land is already in production, although in many places capital investment in infrastructure (irrigation) has waned dropping productivity. There has been a diminishing return to investment on new hybrid introduction which must be continued to stay ahead of pests. The increasing costs of modern fertilizers for the hybrids already narrowed the measure of yield against cost. All this has left the International Rice Research Institute - IRRI.org or Rice Web (IRRI) the premier rice reseach institute in Los Banos, Republic of the Philippines, set up with Ford and Rockefeller foundation funding in the 1960's looking for a new break through or new land to bring under cultivation

Addendum: Feeling guilty for have reworked Trân's lunch recipes into a single paragraph rather than a fuller treatment I had originally intended. I talked to her about these few things on rice I had just learned. Discovering then that after Saigon fell and for the years her father was imprisoned, her mother ran a small rice farm, ten acres or so, in the Mekong delta. Somewhere in the vicinity of Vinh Long I think, and this is where Trân lived when she was young. Their farm even included its own milling, polishing grading, and packing facility. Which she indicated was largely run without the contributions of electrical power. She knew all about voracious planthoppers, the problem of lodging stalks, and the protective little fish (and crabs she says) that live in the flooded paddies, which are mostly smart enough to swim away with the water when the paddies are drained. She allowed herself a moment to reflect on the modest fullness and self sufficiency of the small farm life. Trân, it turns out, knew more about rice culture than I will ever be able to learn. But even this teaches me.

Re: Public

Thu, 22 May 2008 03:54:02 GMT

Natural disasters reveal a societies structure. They reveal a cultures hidden joints and weak points. These parts are habitually papered over by the surplus of normal give and take an appear non-the-worse for it. But strong winds strip this away: China: 40,000 dead, 5 million homeless after quake - washingtonpost.com , Myanmar Raises Cyclone Toll to 78,000.

Particularly emergencies reveal the nature of the governing elites relation to the people. They do that with growing clarity through three phases of a disaster. Immediate reaction: the first responders. These are the actions of the police, fire and health professionals in the affected area. The next phase is the aftermath, when the central government reacts and directs additional resources to the area to provide relief for the exhaustion of initial efforts. The last phase is the restoration of normalacy and efforts to bring the area back into national productivity. Things are cleaned up and rebuilt. Peoples input is heard, and the bureaucracy is examined. What joins all this is these are all points where resources and money are allocated.

All societies aim at a certain ideal state. One of harmony; balance and prosperity. Towards this end they claim a government by for and of the people. In practice quite universally a bipartite affair: the governed and the governing. What we really desire is to not be left ungoverned. That these halves remain a whole. It is an unmistakable marker of illegitimacy when a government does not respond well to a crisis.

Political theory traditionally had its ideas of how a society ends up with a governing structure. Social Compacts, moments of singular unity when agreement passes through a group and they become a people. It doesn't make much difference in the end whether this moment is a mystery, mysticism, or memory, as long as the people concede it must have happened. The government gains authority and responsibility. They set a cultural optimality and set it above the level of individual experience. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, is more critical than the unfettered autonomy of the one. From this arises a model of order, and a repression of anything deviating from that order. This order good or bad will result in general happiness or suffering respectively. Which is judged and felt by the individual, whose well-being in the end is tied to the ability to take actions and make decisions to bring their own life and body back into balance. Even the perception of good or bad order is a perception of individuals tied to their own set of experience convenience and adjustment.

A society perhaps can be thought of as a set of lines. A main line possessing a vector, a direction arising out of the discourse of myriad adjacencies. A separate far smaller parallel line representing the ruling regime which attempts to control the discourse and direction of the first. The distance across is the public space and the primary control is to allow only the public voice in that space. The ruler to the ruled, a public voice of referendum (when allowed) to the ruler. No other institutions or processes can be allowed in that space.

Both Burma and China are authoritarian states. China nominally a republic of the people. Burma, in its guise as Myanmar, no more than an experiment in military tyranny. In both (and they are certainly not alone in this) power and privilege flow together readily to form a sustaining elite, a local nobility. China's rulers appeared to be concerned for its citizens. Alongside its own primacy of course, but the military and bureaucracies turned with a single and efficient face and headed out Teams Struggle to Reach Earthquake Survivors. Data was collected, needs assesed, media coverage organized. More singularly briefly China's people seemed ready and able to care for themselves. Critical public space was allowed open, to fill with spontaneous emergence of citizen assistance, philanthropy and covenanting identity Chinese Open Wallets to Aid Earthquake Victims. The party warming to its practical side seems inclined to allow this for now. As long, I expect, as no group declares or intimates it cares more or can do more for the people than the party Can Charity Change China? - WSJ.com. The Burmese junta demonstrated absolute unconcern for the people of Burma Myanmar Farmers May Miss Harvest, and even appeared aggrieved that the people's misfortune called for some action or appearance of sympathy on their part. The US Navy which after the tsunami a few years ago was able to move supplies in at critical junctures has been disallowed and must sail away U.S. Navy Waiting for Junta's Permission to Deliver Burma Aid - washingtonpost.com. The generals have from the day they invalidated the election of 1990 and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest never been less than Parasitic and Unobliging. Even a month after cyclone Nargis their denial their callous murderous disdain is untouched Myanmar Warned Over Forcing Cyclone Survivors Home - NYTimes.com. But I must not think bad thoughts. It is simply that the Burmese Generals, Than Shwe and the rest, believe manfully in the highest good: order. Order and obedience. The State Peace and Development Council maintains this. The three main objectives of the Union of Solidarity and Development are: 1) Non-disintegration of the Union 2) Non disintegration of national solidarity 3) Perpetuation of sovereignty. Now I am, again un-troubled (see 2:57) and one with the lotus.

Carrier

Thu, 15 May 2008 01:35:19 GMT

I watched the entire ten hours of PBS's documentary CARRIER | PBS (the life of an Aircraft Carrier) the other week. I think I was the only person of those I know who did. That put a bit of a dent in what all else I got done that week, but it was worth it. I was immersed engaged captivated. I spent most of year once on one of those things. A television special like this answers two questions for me: What was going on around me back then, what was it all about? And who was I then? The first because you never see more than a small slice of the total reality of a ship like that from your own perspective. Secondly you remember just enough to have this, let you understand how you may have appeared to others.

Big Grey and Underway The USS Ranger with VF 21 probably in the socal op area for the 1979 Westpac.

There were no real false notes that I saw in this documentary. I attribute this to the care of the film team, to their decision to live with the crew for the duration of the cruise and not just drop by to grab footage and clear out. Also they understood that the ship is (in any given instance) its crew not the steel. This, they said, was advice from the captain, and there is a quote to this effect prominently displayed on the documentary's web site. Further they understood enough to film the demographic center of the crew. Which largely is a peck of people in their first few years out of high school. The command master chief makes this observation at one point, he wouldn't need to say that to anybody whose been on a carrier. I don't think I ever met the Ranger's Master Chief. Of course I was with the air wing not ships company [technically detached to ship's company] and besides I took strenuous effort in those days to keep as much distance as I could between myself and any chief petty officer. Officers especially fighter pilots have had their lives vastly detailed and romanticized elsewhere in popular culture so that they need only be brought in to round this story out.

The film makers followed a select group of people around for the cruise allowing them to represent the crew at large and get to know some individuals well enough to see what things meant to them CARRIER . The Crew | PBS. I thought this worked well and there four crewman in particular that I saw myself relating to. First of all AN Christian Garzone: because he was a cut-up. He clearly lacks that instinct for crisp military severity, but beyond that he was a serious intelligent, and sincere person, and painfully young. He, I identified with. AOAN Chris Altice also. He was a lot like all the people of my cohort who I knew well: A fretter, not really sold on the Navy. One foot in one foot out. Frankly that described most of us then. SSgt Randy Brock was the image of the non commissioned officers (e4-e9) I admired and would sometimes imagine becoming, but their reality, people on their second and third enlistments, was not my reality then, and I don't think I understood them very well. Or gave them their due. LCDR Kevin McLaughlin was like many of the officers I knew. Being enlisted I didn't know any of them well, but the familiar officers. The pilots who would come down to the CVIC for post flight debriefings. The ones like the pilots in my own squadron. Something about LCDR McLauglin also reminded me of the 1630s I worked with. The documentary did not appear to talk to anyone from my own rating.

The documentary made be more aware of the frission of my own changing attitude towards the Navy over the years. I've always had a natural sympathy with sailors and those in service, but I've thought about it more the last several years, and have worked towards a greater understanding of the life they lead, and the work they do, while at the same time arriving at a much sharper view of what is called National Security and the role of the professional military (and its attendants) in a nation which intends democracy. Dreams; though, are the final realm of how you feel. I've had reoccuring dreams of embarking on a second cruise, dreams of intense mundaneness, which began as soon as I left the fleet. I imagine if I could I'd do it again.

A ship has a history and life beyond any particular crew of course CARRIER . The Ship | PBS. But if you know these stories, you know the ship, the ship abstracted. The documentary got all the key things in place, the work, the ports, military life of an airfield. The emphasis on everydayness sometimes masked the critical and highly visible nature of a forward deployed carrier. The purpose and progress seemed distant. You get close to a central truth of carriers if you view them through the lens of being a special type of air-base. Their movement potentials a facet of their whole only. Their primary nature as an air power military instrument. All the same, the logic of their best use, is understood through the traditional notions of sea-power. The emphasis placed on the thirteen carriers required the Navy evolve as a hybrid institution (even further allowing for Marine airpower dedicated to the separate idea of ground troop support to coexist with it). This has made the Modern U S Navy a very complex entity.

CV 61 catching some rays on a quite day

A good deal of the fun with a show like this is looking for the differences (and similarities) between the USS Ranger then and the USS Nimitz now. Primarily - going for the big and obvious: women and email on board ship. We didn't have that. I wrote the same thing here six years ago, at that time it was a real eye-opener. This was on the occasion of an NBC documentary on 17 April 2002 on life aboard the USS John C Stennis, CV 74. I see I even wrote then (06 May 2002): "It seems to me every five to ten years somebody runs a piece like this - one of the networks, Frontline, Nova, somebody - and I usually watch it." I believe the Stennis is the ship that replaced the Ranger in the fleet. John Stennis, a US Senator, was a democrat. I didn't even know DoD let ships be named after democraters, warms my heart it does.

It was interesting to see a fuller look into gender integration at sea, and a couple of years after the previous documentary. It largely confirmed my suspicions that with a little practice this is a viable way of crewing a warship. Which undoubtedly makes long at-sea periods less of a mind warp (which really kicks in only when you get back to port) and makes rotating to shore billets easier for everyone. Email still strikes me as a bit of a double edged sword. I saw that while they shut down email at times to preserve operational security, Email, ubiquitous communication with home in general seemed to be the accepted norm. Curiously overall it didn't seem to make people happier than the rather sketchy fleet post office mail I recall. Many would think I'm wrong here, but it's a matter of formalism, of unity of principle. The distance is the reality here. Hourly communication with home only allows elements of closeness an illusion that isn't real to enter. I can see this making things more difficult for many.

Another thing that frankly surprised me was how much the tools, the mission and daily life were essentially unchanged from my cruise on the USS Ranger USS Ranger Museum Foundation. Its still planes, wires and catapults. Even with these 3rd generation nuclear super carriers. These ships CVN-68 Nimitz-class are essentially just bigger versions of the Ranger Forrestal class aircraft carrier - Wikipedia. The biggest difference the nuclear power plant debuted with the USS Enterprise just a few years after the USS Ranger (though not again for a decade until the USS Nimitz) The other essential modifications were accomplished with the USS Kitty Hawk and subsequent ships Moving the island back behind the second starboard elevator and moving the port elevator to aft. The jets are incrementally better, Guided munitions have come into their own, but it's still jets and jet pilots. Nothing substantially different is slated to replace it Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier - Powerset.The areas of concern are still Korea Taiwan and the Persian Gulf (although the Shah is less of a concern). Its still about being prepared to keep the sea lanes trade routes open which means its still about high-granularity maritime surveillance (though they didn't say so). For the people it's still about water and port calls. Some of the documentaries most evocative scenes were the rough weather scenes. I can still remember an episode on the Ranger where briefly our task force entertained the idea of squeezing by a typhoon in the straits of Formosa north into the Philippine sea to continue routine flight operations. The Typhoon enforced its own ops plan and we ended up spending three days north of Luzon with it, while it passed by. I recall the protractor we taped to the overhead with a nut suspended from a thread so we could measure the angles the ship took to. It can be really amusing (in a warped sort of way) when a big ship like a carrier starts to roll in a heavy sea.

While none of the ports they made matched the concentrated debauchery of Subic Bay, they seemed to have fun. Guam only contained aspects, more civilized bar hopping experience, sand and sun like a day-out on Grandee island (the recreation facility at the mouth of Subic bay). We visited Pusan and Phattya beach, stopped at Yokuska twice. I visited Tokyo on one of those occasion. They visited Kuala Lumpur and Bahrain. And they visited Perth, which the Ranger never quite made it to - due to the incident. I'm still bitter about that. C'mon it was 600 ft long and three stories high, w'dya mean you didn't see it?

The Navy in todays world, may seem difficult to get a grasp on. The wars we find ourselves fighting now are not the Navy's fight. The Nimitz came and went from the Persian Gulf on that cruise flying several hundred sorties I imagine, of only uneventful reserve air support. Here as it often has been over the history of the United States; the Navy's role, its participation in defense, is strategic defense. Keeping the lid on - on all the various cans of worms out there. Simply by being sufficient potential force to answer for any action. I admit to a certain tendency to read between the lines here and for all the noise about the sprung threat to the homeland, to see in the quiescence of the carriers, that the danger of certain vectors of radical Islam, while real, are not a major strategic threat. And are undoubtedly capable of being dealt with smaller, smarter, and logarithmically cheaper than they are now.

Since world war two we've had an army group in Germany a portion of another in Korea. Large but formaly established units with dependent facilities. Air force squadrons cycle between stateside and forward bases, England, Turkey. Since the first gulf war the Air Force also took on onerous enforcement of the Iraqi no-fly zone from bases in the middle east. The Army is now in the middle of one of the longest set of repeated field deployments into an active combat zone in its history. Navy life; though, has always been about deployments and separation, it's never been a comfortable family life. Whether ships were sailing into hostile waters or not when you're out there, you are away.

Blast!

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:29:41 GMT

Somewhere in the course of writing the previous post one of those hay fever related spring-time colds caught up with me and pretty much brought mental forward progress to a halt for a few weeks. The FEC post seemed weak and I lost interest in it and began writing on the PBS Aircraft Carrier 10 hour special which aired last week. Inspired by that, I also began working on some stories from my own days living on an Aircraft Carrier, and the people I knew then. I regard myself as being promised [Jordan E., I haven't forgotten] to write up as many incidents events as seem worthy, that I can still remember. You have to get to a precarious balance of storytelling and remembering to make the exercise worthwhile. I want to stay with the real people I knew, and not invent or combine people or incidents for effect if I write these. It was a while ago now, and requires some effort and technique to get back there.

I had made a start on a couple of these, and was pleased with them so far. This is where things take an unfortunate turn. I had my backpack stolen the other day. In this pack, which I carry to and from work on a bicycle daily, were (amongst other not-less consequential junk) my iPod, A digital camera (a new and rather nice Sony DSC) and my Alpha Smart Neo, a portable word processor, on which I had taken to doing all my draft writing. I had filled up all eight registers with a great mass of at least partially coherent writing. This is now all gone. This is the second time in four (five?) years I've had a camera and iPod stolen. I am less than content on this score. The FEC piece was still somewhat fresh in my mind, plus I had an outline in the MacBook for it. So I was able to reproduce that without too much trouble, or loss. There was the piece where I compare what I bring to work for lunch against what Tran brings - some small discussion of rice occurs. For the Carrier post, which I will rewrite next, I have only a scribbled outline on paper, and some other thoughts I remember from writing. For the stories; I set down some notes today on how I was approaching it, but come up with only patches of the words and sentences I wrote. I worry a little from having lost and retyped files before, that the replication often seems more ossified and hurried than the original, rarely improving on it. However, the way I write perhaps it won't make much difference.