Pairings

I've been recommending Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich



in various contexts of late. It happens that while I was reading it I caught this movie, which I had missed when it was out:



They're delicious together.

Interlude - Blue Horizon

Strange to have an "interlude" with such limited posting, I know, but I need this now and want to share.

STRIKE!

Scienceblogs continues to implode. By my count, 19 bloggers have left. (Carl Zimmer has regularly updated information here, and you can follow the events on Twitter - #SbFail.) Pharyngula is on strike and may be packing up and moving on, and Orac and others are contemplating leaving as well.

One aspect of these situations that often gets lost is the emotional hardship. It's difficult to lose income and to leave a stable situation (even when it's become intolerable). But beyond that, it seems a bit like they're having to pull up stakes and relocate their town. Even if it can be rebuilt in a new, hopefully better, location, leaving behind a familiar home and history is stressful.

Best wishes to all, and I hope the community can remain intact and even grow to include some new voices (a few radicals would be great) from around the world.

I write like...

So this is going around. Mel Gibson rants in the style of Margaret Atwood, and most bloggers apparently sound like David Foster Wallace.

I entered one of my comments from a recent thread at Butterflies & Wheels, and was informed that I write like Daniel Defoe.

I'd like to think it's my potent pamphleteering pointedness, but it may have quite a bit to do with the content - my comment concerned religion and accomodationism, for instance, and Atwood's splendid work and Gibson's frothing attack both deal with gender.

Poem: City of Ships

The other day, people working at the WTC site uncovered a boat. This was the first or second article I read about it. I made a poem entirely from words and phrases I found in the comment thread. (I'm reading Walt Whitman, so the title was also a found object.)

***

CITY OF SHIPS

Nine years, a billion dollars later,
a murder scene.
History is unearthed -
an old ship.
Shabby, derelict vessel,
what one calls junk.
Just a little distraction.

The site, the site of the ship,
was part of the Hudson River.
It is sad, going to deteriorate,
to dry and rot (and warp).
Aerobic microbes
need oxygen to live,
just like people
need a history lesson.

Did they find dinosaur bones, burial grounds,
towers, treasures, slave ships,
the ships that bring in supplies, salaries, corpses?
A bone fragment of those hijackers?
Feed it to the dog.

I just hope
we buried it again.
Archaeologists, 200 years from now,
saddest days,
will search the internet, our landfills
to discover it all
about us.
How we once lived -
self centered and wasteful,
millions wasted,
afraid of our government.
Things that are not that important,
remnants, excavated and documented.
Think of the Roman Empire,
maybe just give up.

Great news!
The internet is only
stored on various computers.
The content disappears
forever.
It's not like internet sites fossilize!

Time to rebuild.
Freedom Tower is rising as I type.
We will stand tall again.
So Manhattan is built
on a big junk pile.
An old boat -
wasn't worth writing about then,
not worth writing about it now.
Junk to us too.
Move it and keep building.
On to the next story.

***

Interlude - Society

Integrity

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2010/07/unconformity.php

http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/2010/07/my_official_farewell.php

http://scienceblogs.com/classm/2010/07/beyond_the_pale.php

http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2010/07/blog_suspended.php

http://scienceblogs.com/culturedish/2010/07/culture_dish_doesnt_live_here.php

http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2010/07/a_pepsi-induced_hiatus.php

http://scienceblogs.com/neuronculture/2010/07/a_food_blog_i_cant_digest.php

http://scienceblogs.com/sunclipse/2010/07/i_dont_make_nearly_enough_mone.php

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2010/07/seed_conflicts_of_interest_and.php

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2010/07/sucking_corporate_dick.php

Anatomy of an Epidemic?

Embedding is disallowed, but here's a link - hot off YouTube! - to Robert Whitaker on Book TV* talking about his book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness.



I haven't yet had a chance to read the book or even review the studies he cites (he lists the major ones on his site), but found the talk provocative. (Also mentioned on the site: an interview with Mercola? Really? I understand that people want to spread the word about their books, but really you have to draw the line somewhere.)

*I just looked at the schedule for this weekend and next. Overall, Book TV seems to be remaining something of a right-wing testosterone fest. It’s a bit creepy. Who selects the books and authors featured, anyway?

HONDURAS: The Normalization of Terror and Resistance Events

Distressing about reports concerning Honduras the past few months is the extent to which they can work to normalize the situation there. There are, of course, explicit attempts at normalization – both by the current illegitimate regime and the Obama administration.



They seek not only the cultural but the institutional normalization of the coup and its results in the form of international and specifically OAS recognition of the Lobo government and the acceptance of the farcical “Truth Commission.” But much coverage, intentionally or more likely unconsciously, risks playing into these normalization efforts by treating events in Honduras as a stage for human rights violations divorced from historical context (or reframed from within a historical vision that is already biased and circumscribed) and marginalizing the people who continue to work for justice in Honduras.

It is of course valid and necessary to draw attention to human rights abuses, including murders, in Honduras (among many other violations, nine journalists have been killed already this year). What we should be careful of, though, is falling into a script that depoliticizes the people and organizations on the ground there, ignores the local and global economic forces at play, or presents events as falling within some generic image of “organic” Central American violence.

Given this, I’m going to try to continue focusing on the efforts being made by social justice movements in Honduras and their supporters elsewhere. As the anniversary of the coup on June 28th approaches, Adrienne Pine at Quotha has listed some of the events organized to help people learn more and get involved:

• En Las Sombras (documentary about Honduras) airing on TeleSUR
  Monday, June 28, 2010
  (on TV in Latin America; online at the TeleSUR link on the left side of the page)

• Los Angeles: Protest-Vigil at Honduran Consulate
  Monday, June 28, 2010
  5 PM
  General Consulate of Honduras in Los Angeles
  3550 Wilshire Boulevard
  (more here)

• Berlin: Walter Trochez Queer Alliance Protest and Film
  Monday, June 28, 2010
  (more here)

• New York City: Karla Lara and Rodolfo Pastor at the Brecht Forum
  Friday, July 2, 2010
  7/8 PM
  Brecht Forum
  51 West Street
  (more here)

• New York City: Premiere of We Are Not Afraid: Inside the Coup in Honduras
  Wednesday, July 7, 20107 PMTribeca Cinemas54 Varick Street
  (more here)

• Washington, DC: Premiere of We Are Not Afraid: Inside the Coup in Honduras
  Tuesday, July 8, 2010
  E Street Cinema? [This is listed but I can’t find it on the theater’s web site. Probably calling them would be best.]

(If you know of other events, please leave me a note in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.)

More developments: The democratic resistance movement has organized an alternative truth commission. The US government is giving more money to Honduran “security” forces. People should be watching sales of Honduran resources or deals made with corporations, in mining, power, etc. - contracts made with this government should be seen as invalid, in my view. There is also a dengue outbreak in Honduras.

This article by Dawn Paley emphasizes the economic powers behind the coup and the continuing efforts to shape Honduras in the interests of the rich. For a longer view, of course, the classic work is Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America – a magnificent book.



Also opening this week: Oliver Stone’s South of the Border. Here are Stone and Tariq Ali being interviewed about the film on Democracy Now! (There’s a Wall Street 2 coming out? Really?):



(I'm not sure if the video will show up; if not, please click on the link.) I haven’t seen it, and will wait until I do before I comment. Preliminarily, though – it appears to focus excessively on a handful of political figures rather than on the social movements that drive the transformations of these countries. It also seems perhaps not to look critically enough at Chavez and others. I do look forward to seeing it, though. You can find where it’s playing here.

Gil Scott-Heron

Freedom in the Cloud

It was a decade ago, searching for the latest articles on anarchism, that I first came across Eben Moglen. It was this piece - "Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright" - and, while he didn't have anything particularly intelligent to say about anarchism as a political-economic movement, I found the article interesting and shared it with people at the time.

Over the years, others have linked to various talks Moglen has given. Recently someone in a comment thread at Narco News linked to this one from earlier this year. Here he is on "Freedom in the Cloud":



As usual, xkcd gets it.

The trouble for some of us is that while we share the concern of the character in this strip we lack the technical knowledge to contribute significantly to change in this way (or at least I believe I do). But I can do my small part connecting people to those working on it.

UPDATE:

Here's Part 2 - the Q&A:

HONDURAS UPDATE 4-24-10

Very solid, contextualized reports on the Bajo Aguán from the RNN:





Also,

* more journalists murdered

* "U.S. Advises Security Apprenticeships in Colombia"

* the "Honduran Queeringhouse"

* also from Adrienne Pine at Quotha: URGENT Communique from the Jesuits of Honduras

Questions for accomodationists

Following up on and drawing from recent conversations, I have a series of questions for accomodationists:

1) Do you, personally, believe in a deity of any sort? If so, on what basis? If not, why don't you?

2) Can you clearly define the supernatural entities (including that of the supernatural itself) that you believe to be untestable as to their facticity? Not name in a general way, but define them as entities, such that people can ascertain whether they're amenable to investigation.

3) Do you believe that science is the only reliable means for acquiring knowledge about the world? If not, please describe the others. What knowledge have they produced independently of science? More generally, what is knowledge that isn’t scientific knowledge?

4) If you answered negatively to the first three questions – therefore demonstrating that there is no rationale that you personally can accept for believing in a deity, that the supernatural concepts you’re defending can’t be defined coherently, and that there are no reliable means of acquiring knowledge about the world other than science – on what basis do you promote respect for the beliefs and epistemic “systems” you do?

It seems to me extremely hypocritical to encourage respect for beliefs that are not formed on the basis of science – a reasoned (logical, including parsimonious) and honest systematic engagement with the evidence – while claiming to promote science and personally rejecting those beliefs and approaches. It is dishonest to argue "Well, whatever is true in science, we’re not always scientific in every area of our lives," such that science is presented, in a silly ahistorical manner,* as limited to what professional scientists do in very specific contexts, having no claim on beliefs in general. This is because the questions that immediately follow are: Is this OK? Is an evidentiary basis for our beliefs not a moral requirement? Are we not all required by intellectual honesty and basic morality to base our beliefs, which form an essential foundation for our actions, on the most honest engagement with the best evidence we have?

If you argue that the moral requirement doesn’t hold because some beliefs can be maintained "benignly," without affecting people’s actions or decisions, you need to consider three things. First, even if it might be accurate in some specific cases, this is often not a true claim - people's beliefs are not generally quarantined from their actions in this way. Second, matters on which beliefs that might at one time or one place not be important to people’s actions can become so. Would you recommend agricultural, reproductive, or environmental policies based on beliefs that are not derived scientifically when these are matters of life and death to people? Further, does pondering nonscientific notions interfere with and draw time and resources away from important scientific investigations? Third, and most importantly, in defending nonscientific beliefs and epistemic systems of any sort, aren’t you encouraging nonscientific thinking in general, such that people influenced by you will have fewer intellectual and practical defenses against even those products of nonscientific thinking you find reprehensible?

*(which is, moreover, the contrary of how science education should be encouraging young people to think about science)

You people wouldn't know scientific literacy if it...

Ay. So the recent flap concerns the NSF’s decision to remove questions on evolution and the Big Bang from its scientific literacy report. PZ has a good post about it, while some others at Scienceblogs, well, don’t.

What framing “experts” clearly fail, or in some cases refuse, to grasp is that we need to define scientific literacy in a meaningful and useful way, and if there exists more than one way of understanding scientific literacy, to focus on the one that is actually important. The concept of scientific literacy advocated by the NSF (in this decision) and some assorted dillweeds seems to be “knowledge of a collection of facts accumulated through scientific research” or “reverence for science.” But the important form of scientific literacy is understanding science as an epistemic system. Scientific knowledge is formed through the analysis of empirical evidence, and specific collective practices have been developed that have made the methods of science the means of acquiring knowledge about the natural world and given its findings a particular epistemic status. Awareness of specific facts in various disciplines is not unimportant, but anyone reasonably intelligent can memorize statements and even processes and any fool can “respect” scientific and technological achievements.

Is it important to contemporary society that a child can parrot facts about biology or cosmology if that child doesn’t understand why his or her superstitious beliefs don’t have the same status as established scientific theories, that the religious “way of knowing” about the world is no such thing, and that knowledge based on decades or centuries of research can’t be dismissed on the basis of ancient texts or the words of religious authorities, political hacks, or corporations? This is a central goal of the NSF? This is extremely dangerous to democracy.

I realize that this can be read as suggesting that even someone with a science degree can be called a scientific illiterate. That is in fact what I’m arguing. The value in scientific literacy is in understanding science epistemically and appreciating the roots of its power. Otherwise, children might as well be memorizing Bible verses or advertising jingles.

HONDURAS: the struggle for a democratic constitution continues, despite the best efforts of the opponents of democracy

I have been collecting reports on those struggling for justice in Honduras and the violence they've faced, but these two recent reports do a good job summarizing the situation:

First, "Disappearing the Truth in Honduras: 'National Reconciliation' & the 'Truth Commission' Provide Cover for Repression Aimed at Destroying the Demand for a New Constitution" from Anne Bird at Rights Action.

Second, "U.S. covering up reality in Honduras" from the Real News Network:



Not much more to say. These governments, by their actions, show contempt for truth and democracy. Continuing to support the movement for justice and a new constitution in Honduras in absolutely necessary.