the palestinian situation

i spent christmas break in palestine and in jerusalem (israel). (bethlehem, ramallah, jericho, and jerusalem) while there i witnessed the absurd suffering of the palestinians, and the absurd rule of the israeli government. on relating some simple stories to some friends back home (like: palestinians have to have different color license plates, and have to drive on different, unpaved, 5x as long roads to get from point a to b. they cannot visit jerusalem without a permit, and if they are also muslim (many palestinians are christian) they cannot visit jerusalem at all, and so on) my friends said they had never heard of these injustices towards the palestinians. they are in essence treated as second class people, denied many civil liberties, and are quite desperate for liberty and peace.

my question is: what do you know about the situation? and how did you learn about it?

i am curious if your experiences from: academia, the news media, or the internet has shaped your views on israel/palestine, and how?

from a peace rally in jerusalem
jewish women protesting the occupation in palestine

Sentience and Robots

So, over dinner last night Vince brought up a concept that he's planning to fill out into a concept album/EP. One which I fully support and will spend good chunks of time daydreaming about: Sentience in robots, and what that would sound like.

My post is brief because my question is thus: what are interesting nuances and themes Vince can use?

Such hits have included:

• At what point would robots be too similar to humans?


• Conscious "othering" of robots


• Anthropomorphizing robots


• What does switching on / shutting down feel like?


• How does a robot mature? Are there noticeable changes? And would the robot be aware of this?


• Given the sudden self-awareness of said robot, what kind of issues might it have?

Progressive

This has been bugging me since the middle of college, and I find that every time I hear about Congressional conflict or Pakistani strife or donate a dollar to a food service at the super market I'm reminded of it.

What is the goal at the end of social activism? What do we want the world to be like?

And don't you dare give me an answer that begins and ends with "equality" or "and end to hunger". Does equality mean we try to dissolve cultural differences? Does an end to hunger mean global Communism? I want to know what you really think the best possible world would be like.

For example, I was thinking about Heaven. People sometimes point out that Hell sounds much more interesting than Heaven. Eternity wihout conflict sounds very boring. Similarly, I wouldn't wish for a world without pain or strife, as those things are essential to understanding ourselves, and are valuable experiences.

But, if pain and suffering are valuable, why change the way things are?

Well, I think pain is valuable, but suffering less so. Something of an ideal world would be a place where we are free to have all sorts of experiences, all sorts, but there is always hope and the sense that they will not last forever (and indeed they would not). The tragedy of poverty is that it is so difficult to overcome. Starving children will die and not have a life. The cessation of suffering is the most important thing in the world, but the absence of any suffering is the absence of part of our human identity.

So, take any topic, be it racism, poverty, ignorance, boredome, consumerism, whatever, and try to imagine what you REALLY want the world to be like. When you say "I want to make a difference", what is it that you're striving toward.

What will the world look like when we decide we can stop trying to change it?

GETTING WHAT YOU WANT/ARE ENTITLED TO

So I received a call at work the other day from a guy who was very upset that I couldn’t help him. He told me he was “visually impaired” and went on about how I was being unfair to him, all the while dropping phrases like “Lawyers” and “Americans with Disabilities Act” whenever I suggested all the alternative ways I could accommodate him. Obviously fed up with my inability to give him exactly what he wanted, he asked to speak to my manager.

NOTE – the reason I couldn’t help this guy had nothing to do with company policy, etc. I tried to do everything in my power to help him. But in order to give him what he wanted, I would’ve had to have taken something from another customer.

My manager essentially told him everything I did and he then reiterated the illegality of our inability to help him, again citing that visual impairment was a disability covered in the “Americans with Disabilities Act.” He then asked to speak to her manager. At which point, I lost track of the conversation.

It struck a chord with me and my co-workers because we see and hear a lot of this: people complaining loudly about not “getting what they pay for” and expecting us to kowtow to their rather loud and angry demands. And, as a rule, I personally don’t approve of people “making a scene” in order to get their way. It sends the message that “if you complain loud enough, you can get anything you want.”

However, I told this story to a co-worker at my other job (who has legal experience) and she sided with the customer.

“You have to give them what they want. It may be ‘unfair,’ but it’s the law.”

Now I’m not posing that we all argue the fairness of the “Americans with Disabilities” Act—let’s not even get that abstract—I’m asking how you would’ve handled a call like that. Do you agree that the man should’ve gotten what he wanted?

FYI - I’m guessing that since I didn’t hear anything from my manager’s manager that the customer got what he wanted.

Idolatry

Who are a couple of artists you admire and why?

general education makes no sense

if i'm paying tens of thousands of dollars to studying something specific

why should some fat guys decide that it would be to my benefit to waste time on general(lly) unrelated subjects?

is this just some ploy to make more money? to force us to take more and more classes?

why should educational institutions make this decision for us? shouldn't we be able to decide for ourselves whether or not we want to take unrelated classes or not? and the marketplace should determine whether or not this was a successful decision - the decision should not be made beforehand by the status quo

- will you hire a psychologist who has spent 3 years studying nothing but his science or one who has spent 4 and half of it was full of entry level introductions to a variety of unrelated subjects? your answer to that question, by the way, ultimately shoudln't matter, because people should choose whichever they want. there needs to be more options, more reform, more experimentation in education. it needs to be more open.

gen ed = high school again

this rant is really unstructured (apologies) but for something more intellectually interesting try this text: deschooling society by ivan illich. easily one of the most enlightening things i've ever read.

libertarianism and the environment

i found this interview with republican presidential candidate ron paul to be extremely interesting - before this i wouldn't have thought a libertarian government would be good for the environment. but if the law is enforced, and the protection of people from injury to themselves or to their property is really what government strives for - it seems like it might work, and work well, to th ebenefit of everyone and the environment. what do you think?

Lag

They say this...

Several studies indicate that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month, depending on whose figures you choose to believe) and that few are regularly updated. [http://www.caslon.com.au/weblogprofile1.htm]

And I'm beginning to think a lot of us are going to fall into that category except for Ev, Fred, me, and the old reliable, Stuart.

But this leads into my question: How serious is everyone about blogging? Given that this statistic is almost spot-on accurate even among our own circle, what is the appeal of starting a blog, and more importantly, what is the appeal of maintaining a blog? And what can motivate someone to do just that - to keep it afloat and not washed away with the rest of internet detritus.

Fear of Teenagers

This is an issue we've actually discussed and probably doesn't need to extend further than need be, but I believe we still haven't found a definitive solution.

Mahea, Evan, Stuart and I have an annoying neighbor kid who doesn't quite understand that he's not part of our group of friends, just an acquaintance with whom we are cordial. I treat him as nicely as I can, but he's not encouraging it by infringing upon every opportunity to tag along. Even Vince has experienced this. I tell him I'm working (which actually isn't a lie) but the truth is I can work in the presence of others quite easily. Just not people who will stare over my shoulder and will break my concentration by asking questions about what I'm doing - and then offering comments and anecdotes that do not elicit the slightest interest in me.

I'm really annoyed with this kid and I don't know how to keep him from pouncing on me every chance he gets. Subtlety obviously doesn't work. Maybe we should use more erudite language around him so he gets lost and can't participate? I dunno. Something. Anything. Help.

Damned If You Don't

Again an NPR article has got me riled up.

Similar to my indecision regarding "what do you do when people are assholes", what do you do when laws and policies can be abused? I have a hard time deciding whether a program or policy should exist when you know it will help some, but also is sure to be abused by others.

There was apparently a hostage situation recently that ended in deaths because authorities couldn't get paperwork through the propper channels in time. The elongated process took nine hours, and in that time things went bad. The reaction from our rational and forward thinking government is that searches and arrests that affect our "national security" should not be hindered by court approval. Now the problem with this, I think most agree, is the potential to have a government or any powerful group posess dangerous power. We don't ever want our government to be unaccountable for violations of our rights.

At the child care subsidy agency where I work, we are fully aware that our services are being abused. People are on government cash aid who appear to have plenty of money. People claim to be caring for children who we actually see working at Vons while they're supposed to be watching kids. People claim to be watching children who can't possibly be watching them according to the parents' accounts of when they bring the children there. Most of the time it's hard to prove. When it's staring us in the face and we report it, it takes months to process, dozens of our own hours to prepare, and may or may not be provable as far as courts are concerned. It's frustrating because its all of our money that is being used to pay dishonest people. At the same time, there are UCLA students who call just to let us know that they couldn't go to school if it weren't for the service. There are familes of five children who's single mother parent reports 10 hour shifts at Target. There are families that we meet who are so screwed up that I'm just glad that their getting some money so that their kids don't starve.

So I'm torn. Should we be concerned with the individual, the few who would benefit from special care and more flexible laws, or do we make sure that nobody can abuse the system? Is our financial and civil freedom as a whole more important than the lives of the few who may suffer? I'm inclined to sympathize with society in the case of the PATRIOT (it's an acronym I just found out) Act. I'm inclined to side with the children when it comes to my job.

Maybe it's a matter of frequency. Maybe for every five who need government aid, one abuses it. Maybe an unchecked government would make it harder for ten citizens to live for each one life it saved. Cost/benefit analysis. It just seems wrong for us to allow any abuse of noble ambitions, or to allow suffering to persist.

False Authority

Growing up, I took my parents' word as law, thought they knew better than me, knew what to do in every situation. I listened to them when they told me which school to attend, which Church to go to, how to improve myself, to go to college first thing out of high school. However, the older I get, the more I realise they don't have a clue, and they were just guessing along the way.

More and more I realise that this is prevalent among anyone tasked with making decisions; they're often going off little more than guesses. Doctors listen to your symptoms, maybe take your blood pressure or listen to your heartbeat, and then make an educated guess about what's wrong with you. My grandmother was mis-diagnosed twice by doctors last year when she had a bowel infection. Mechanics tinker around, kick the tires, check your fluid levels, and then make a guess as to what's wrong with your car. I spent $90 at AAMCO (a transmission specialist mechanic chain) who told me I needed a new Catalytic Converter (a $150 part) for my car, when all I needed was more transmission fluid in my car ($20). More and more I find that people really have no clue what they're doing.

So how does this make you feel about becoming an adult? I always thought there would be some switch-over moment where I instantly knew what to do, and possessed the knowledge to act confidently in every situation I face. I admit imaging such a moment is silly, but now I find out that I'm always going to feel as confused and clueless as I do now, and it scares me.

Corollary to that, I realise now without any benchmarks to track my life by, finishing high school, finishing college, etc., that life isn't a series of stages where when one enters the next stage they will become someone new and completely different than they are now. Life is an endless string of days exactly like this one. Unless I make changes now, I'm going to feel the same and be the same person in the future that I am today.

Ev's Post (Moderation)

Though Ev's story is blogworthy, I found it to be irrelevant and had to lay down some mod (after letting him know, of course).

But this brings up an interesting question: what exactly is allowed here? Do we allow for short form, like Josh's post? Is it just philosophy, or can we pose questions that are more open ended? Do we relegate anecdotes to just our personal blogs?

Let's lay down some ground rules and link to it as a Code of Conduct on the sidebar.

"electric pigs" or "i'm not sure how to add videos from youtube to blogger"

so here is the link




young buck with adversarial tone talking rapidly as if he KNOWS his time is up, creating tension, erupting at mention of SKULL AND BONES in "sir you must go" and his resist, equals jolts of electricty, and the fans look on, someone said "police brutality" but for him it was just a tv show

what you think mang

if i were a cop i would not have been paying attention, john kerry is BORING

I want to do something that matters...

{NOTE: I posted this on my regular blog, i'm not sure if it belongs here, but it's something to, hehe, 'think' about.}

I think that's something we can all say about our lives. And yet, i look at the people around me, live, work, sleep, and die around me, and i don't think that they would all be able to say that.

More time than i'd like to admit is spent in the observation of others and i've come to find (and have been confirmed in numerous conversations with my peers of higher-than-average intelligence) that quote "normal people" don't seem have the desire to learn, understand, utilize, infer, reason, perceive, wonder, ponder, application and production desires that i, or even my friends, have.

Even i get tired of thinking, of questioning things i'll never fully understand, and take joy in doing something merely for the simplest of pleasures. I revel in banality at times; early to bed early to rise, 1 protein 1 starch 1 vegetable; and live under a blanket of the unrelenting cliches we pride ourselves on breaking free of. Yet, in those moments, however long they be, there's an unspoken understanding that it will not last forever. This understanding, i believe, is from a deep and personal desire to not only analyze the cliche, but to also change it, make it unique, stamp it as my own creation, and in doing so, lift it up beyond the mundane and hope to inspire others to do the same as well.

I don't believe that anything you think or want can be wrong. I must, of course, preface that with my belief that how you act upon those thoughts and desires can be inappropriate when negatively affecting others (although that, in it of itself, provides a huge spectrum of grey, those shades and tones i don't wish to discuss now)and that can be considered wrong. But, as graphic and beastly as it may be to say, for whatever demented reason, if you think you'd like to kill someone in the most masochistic way and not act upon it, i think that's completely fine. But i digress...

All my life i've been astounded by what humans in all our glory have come up with. The smallest painting of DaVinci, or Dali if you prefer, a passage of Emily Dickinson, it is incredible to think of how any of it came about. We have the power to rearrange atoms, to create, to destroy, to move, and to form, and call it what you will (a muse, inspiration, or even despair) it all begins with a single thought; A thought to pick up a brush, to get our of a chair, to light a match, to take a breath in preparation to speak... Every single wonderful, amazing, great, unbelieveable, beautiful, disgusting, shameful, hopeful thing we've ever done starts with a thought.

So when i say i want to do something that matters, i first do it for myself. I take the banal and make it unique, make it my own. And then i want to do the thing that would seem like it would be the easiest thing in the world to do... make someone think. And it usually is... you smile, someone thinks "aww, how nice", "wow, she's cute", "he looks like a happy person" but the true art is in getting them to think about what you personally want them to think about. I want to make others think about making ways for others to make others think about making ways for others think about making ways for others to make others think and so on and so forth.

Ahh, now how to do THAT? Well my friends, THAT is the hard part. Maybe what matters most is to strive for the answer to THAT question. And in doing so, in questioning the questions that have always and never been questioned, by getting you to question, maybe that can be my something that matters.

Potatoes: Finite and Infinite

The emergence of the internet is the most significant sociological even of our lifetime, and it may continue to be so. Internet phenomena usually aren't completely unique, but serve as extreme examples of concepts we're already familiar with (ex: relationships and issolation). However, there's one area that, for me, an internet phenomenon was the last straw that made me think we really need to rethink a familiar concept.

We need to reexamine the notion of property and what should constitute ownership.

A friend and co-contributor, Josh, turned me onto one of his friend's blog entries that summarized the issue thusly: The concept of ownership exists in response to the fact that resources are limited. When trying to feed a community, everyone cannot have a certain potato. The potato exists in space and is finite. Therefore, establishing ownership is a good and fair way of dealing with the problem. However, this concept cannot be as easily applied to objects these days. There isn't a limit to the number of mp3's of a certain song, or copies of a certain image. Anybody can duplicate any digital object. As far as digital media goes, we effectively can have infinite potatoes. Information is no longer a finite comodity.

So, what does that do to the notion of ownership? What the hell is intellectual property?

For me, intuitive definitions of property begin to be less useful when they are dealing non-limited objects.

We generally think that if you pay money for something, it's yours. But I don't have the right to copy information that I paid for. (The hard drive on my iPod is mine, but direction that the metal fillaments on the hard drive are facing is not.)

We think that if you put effort into creating something, it belongs to you. But if my effort yeilds something that is similar enough in form to something that already exists, it's not mine.

We generally think that if you come up with an idea, an image, something, that is unique, it is inherently your property. But then what space does that leave for insipration, collaboration?

Is this MY blog? I created it. I'm the primary administrator. It was MY idea (right?). Is it MINE? Is it Googles? Is it OURS?

This is not an internet specific grey area. Hip hop has been plagued with questions of who owns sound collages. How many seconds can a sample be before it become stealing? Corporations belong to shareholders, but are often talked about as if they belong to the CEO.

We want to protect our effort. We fear being ripped off, or having someone else get the glory and the limited potatoes that we deserve. But this concept of property is treated as if it's concrete, innate, logical. It seems to me that it's anything but. It's abstract, ambiguous, artificial. Necessary.

I don't want to imply that I want to see everything be communal and the concept of private property be abolished. I think there's value in the notion of ownership. But it needs work.

The place where property gets really difficult to define, and where file sharing is most relevant, is artistic creation. You'd think it'd be easy to say "if I created it, it's mine". But what happens when you sell that? Is a copy of what you created still the thing that you created? Is it yours just because it looks like what you made? Is your creation the object or the idea?

Here's one example of how I see things, and how things get messed up in my mind. My photos are mine. I made them. However, I do not have the right to tell people how to use them. If I sell a picture, it's theirs. I gave it to them. The image is my creation, presentation of the image is not. To say "you can't display my picture on your body because I created it so I can tell you what to do with it" is to say that by taking a picture I claim ownership to behaviors relating to that picture. We wouldn't say that about a physical object. Nobody could sue us for Gravity Club because the don't want their hard engineering work ruined by us throwing it off stairs. I have the right to say how I want the prints I make displayed in my house, or in an art gallery where I'm displaying them. I do not have the right to tell someone who bought my prints not to burn them or where to put them in their house. It's theirs, not mine. The danger comes when I sell a picture to someon who pays 20 bucks for my image, then uses it in advertising and makes thousands using it. But, is that any different from them hanging it in their house? Are they selling my image, or using my image ot sell something else. Should I get money either way?

So, I ask you, what are the qualities of ownership? What connection do you have to have to an object or idea before you can claim it as part of you (can you ever claim an idea as your own). After all, isn't that what it means to own something?

Children of the Interwebs

Wow, this got off to a good start!

I was going to just talk about the topic that inspired the blog's title, but the comments made by Nico, Fred and Ev are worthy of a new discussion.

We refer to a concept of social behavior as "relationships" without specifying much about what that means. Interactions between friends, interaction between acquaintances, interaction between strangers, and the ever daunting term "A Relationship" all seem to escape concrete boundaries despite their constantly popping up in discussions.

It's difficult to say whether seeing a person is more important than talking to them, whether talking with a keyboard is less valuable than talking with vocal cords, without talking about what it is about "relationships" that's valuable.

So...what is it about "relationships" that's valuable? Why do we seek them? What are the qualities of a good one? Is it more important to have many or a few intense ones?

The internet added a new level of compartmentalization to relationships. We can experience only voluntary information from other people. We receive nothing that they don't offer and can extract next to nothing without their knowing. Does that mean electronic social interaction is less genuine or more so? Does the fact that people may be uncomfortable around other's physical bodies reveal that they are unable to relate to real people, or that they have become used to intimacy at another level?

What are the ramifications of vluntary electronic socializing on the concept of "romance"?

What has electronic culture taught us about what is really important when it comes to people?

(is that too many questions for a single post?)

New Webcomic: Web Bacon

Thought I'd share this here in an effort to not clog your inboxes.

I'm starting up another webcomic because I find its easier for me to express my feelings through that medium than through phone, IM, or even email conversations. I think because it takes a fair amount of time to make the comics just doing so helps me get my feelings out in the open.

So with that said....
Web Bacon
Is up and running!

Just like here, I'd appreciate any comments you can give me on the work presented!

If you want the Preview Comic go for it.

It also has an Atom Feed... so you could Subscribe to it, if you wanted!

Love,
Ev

Snapshot

I like to write. So this opportunity is definitely lends to indulging that part of me - and I'm more than willing to become a guinea pig.

This is titled "snapshot" as an initial reaction to reading Stiles' post.

How do I see the world? Right now, and these days more than ever, through a computer screen. I am a screenager. And does this frighten me in that whole dystopian fantasy of a detached culture of isolation? Hell no. I see and feel connectivity. I have all your blogs, myspaces, facebooks, show listings, websites, del.icio.us bookmarks, all fed to me by harnessing aggregation technology. I do not feel out of touch behind this screen - I feel more in touch.

Some of you, with your strange attachment to physical intimacy, might feel freaked out about this vision of the future. I'm not. Quite the contrary. My identity and hunter-gatherer presence spread out on the 'net like a sweet veneer of Nutella has made a lot of my life accessible from many locations in the physical world. And I love it.

Evan, you mentioned that information is not necessarily thoughtfulness - but the fact that I have been able to make immediate use of a lot of this information--to synthesize it into something immediately useful--does that make me thoughtful? I don't think so - but it does makes me present. It makes me virtually sentient. And that, I think, is a step in the direction of being thoughtful.

Graduates

This blog is a space to talk about theories in our personal lives. To discuss how we see the world in terms that are more specific than what we see on tv and what we say in passing. I want this blog to a place to post ideas about our personal philosophies.

Erin made a good point the other day. This time in our lives is more important than people think. Poeple includes us, and the time is "after college".

I think for most of us, independence (real independence) is an idea that we only started considering in college, and has only really been a life experience for a little over two years.

This is significant. For our entire lives we've traveled in tracks of other ideologies and values. We've used other people's definitions by necessity and lack of alternatives. We still do this, but we no longer really have to. The great adolescent dream of being without boundaries and managers is finally upon us!

Of course, we don't embrace such freedom. Freedom of that kind is limiting and endangering. We still assume other people's definitions, have managers, follow paths. We've graduated from the world of enforced conformity and into the world of voluntary conformity.

However, as many of us have felt for a long time, while conformity is valuable and necessary, it too is dangerous. Thoughtless conformity leaves us vulnerable to thoughtful manipulation. The dangerous element of both freedom and conformity is thoughtlessness.

I don't think we talk about theory enough as a culture. We as youths have become independent in an environment that nutrures independence more than most in history thanks to the information highway. However, information is not thoughtfulness. Information is also generalities, summaries, assumptions, biases, prejudices. I'm not sure philosophy has ever been popular, but I think philosophy and abstract theory is important to make sense of complicated things. And people do talk about philosophy. They call it values, principles, morales, standards. Yet all too often these things are not upheld, or even understood by the people who propose them. Of all things, globalization requires principles, standards and values. Being responsible in an environment of kelidoscopic backgrounds and perspectives means that we understand our ideas beyond annecdotes and generalities. We can't simply be confident with decisions by following our social compass. We are too aware of our own fallability and the influence of our subjective past.

I think it's high time we talked about our personal philosophies. We're becoming whole people and represent a real and valuable world perspective. Let's talk about that perspective. Lets define the terms that we use that are ambiguous. Let discuss why we do the things we do. Let's talk about how we see the world.