Anchor States

?

2008-11-14T11:06:00.004-05:00

This is a 3-years-overdue information post, which will remain perma-linked on the sidebar.

Anchor States: The name of a 3-part musical suite by Stars of the Lid, forming side B of their LP Per Aspera Ad Astra. My favorite part of this suite is Part 3, which I find shockingly profound in its minimalism. It's the closest thing I've ever experienced to synaesthesia, in the sense that this is what the inside of my head sounds like. There is a beautiful contrast in Part 3 between organic, monotone synths (nostalgia, peace, memory) and shimmering, mechanical ambience (future, forboding), which resonates deeply with my often bifurcated and ambivalent emotional life.

: The word "hevel" (may be rendered "Abel"), used frequently in the book of Ecclesiastes. Translated variously as vanity, meaninglessness, vapor, emptiness, smoke, worthlessness, etc. It is a word that broadly yet pointedly captures the sensibility of our time, that is, of consumer culture -- the illusion of choice, false self-determination and identity formation, and the spiritualization of consumption. English has few remaining words as full of meaning as this, perhaps because it has been so brutalized by advertising.

I was born in 1983, the year that The Precession of Simulacra was published. I am male, white, and happily married. I live in Philadelphia, my home since 1991. I believe in God, though this makes me a pariah in many of my spheres of interaction (academia, art, Heavy Metal).

I am rarely paid for the work I consider most valuable. I have many useful skills but few credentials.

Morning again in America

2008-11-06T20:21:00.007-05:00

"It's not that I would have felt less love of country if voters had chosen John McCain. And this reaction I'm trying to describe isn't really about Obama's policies. I'll disagree with some of his decisions, I'll consider some of his public statements mere double talk and I'll criticize his questionable appointments. My job will be to hold him accountable, just like any president, and I intend to do my job.

"For me, the emotion of this moment has less to do with Obama than with the nation. Now I know how some people must have felt when they heard Ronald Reagan say 'it's morning again in America.' The new sunshine feels warm on my face."

-Eugene Robinson, Washington Post 11/6/08

A lot of people are talking about whether Barack Obama's election heralds an ideological shift from "center-right" leftward. I think that's missing the point. I'm deeply troubled by the angry and disappointed conservatives who are claiming that America is "finished" or is going to become "socialist", or that Democrats will "overreach" and get tossed. Maybe they feel left out, like they can't join the celebration of the "winners" because they're the "losers".

But I don't think that this joyful shock we are experiencing has anything to do with partisanship. I don't think people were crying and and lifting their hands to the sky two nights ago because the Democrats got the White House back. It's not even really about sticking it to George Bush, as much as he is now reviled in most circles, and I have detected no sense of snide self-satisfaction in most of the celebrating. It's something new. Our people are beginning to realize that anything really is possible, and that America is very symbolically putting its money where its mouth has been for 232 years. The meaning of "freedom" in this nation became broader and deeper and more real on Tuesday night.

Some of my more conservative friends have the idea that Obama is loved outside the U.S. because other nations want to make us weak and compliant, and believe that an Obama presidency would serve that end. These friends feel affronted and demoralized seeing spontaneous celebrations of Obama's election in other countries. Again, I think that's misunderstanding the motive. Just as much as I believe the overflowing joy here in the U.S. has nothing to do with partisanship, I believe that the celebrations abroad reflect not a perception of Barack Obama, but a perception of us. The world is excited because they now see that we, the people of the United States, are not so "rigid" and "bigoted" as they thought -- that maybe the sullen, arrogant, bullying superpower they knew had more to do with transient leadership than with the real soul and identity of our nation. Every man, woman, and child in this country, regardless of who they voted for, can own this new position of respect and global leadership. You and I and every citizen of our nation are now looked upon in awe, because we have again, at long last, demonstrated the promise of our heritage and led the world by example rather than by might. The victory belongs not to a person, a party, or a government, but to all the people of the United States, who once again have a reason to be proud.

Two videos of beauty pageant contestants

2008-09-30T12:05:00.001-04:00

CRINGE

A serious post related to this topic is forthcoming... don't judge me just yet.

Woes

2008-09-15T15:10:00.015-04:00

"Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land. YHWH Sabaoth has declared in my hearing: 'Surely the great houses will become desolate, the fine mansions left without occupants...'

"Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine. They have harps and lyres at their banquets, tambourines and flutes and wine, but they have no regard for the deeds of YHWH, no respect for the work of his hand....Therefore my people will go into exile for lack of understanding; their men of rank will die of hunger and their masses will be parched with thirst.

"Therefore the grave enlarges its appetite and opens its mouth without limit; into it will descend their nobles and masses with all their brawlers and revelers....Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent."

-a portion of Isaiah, chapter 5

Insufferable sarcastic politicians

2008-09-04T15:55:00.007-04:00

From Politico:

"Ms. Palin needs to be reminded that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor."

I think if you had Rush Limbaugh read Sarah Palin's speech, it would have seemed completely in character. Which is to say, snide, semi-hypocritical, and content-less. Why hasn't the economy been mentioned one single time at the RNC?

The other thing I can't stand is the fact that if Chelsea Clinton had a child out of wedlock, conservatives would be all over Hillary. It would be damning evidence of Clinton moral bankruptcy, etc. etc. etc. But when this woman's 17-year-old daughter gets pregnant, somehow she's mom of the year? What? And her motherhood seems to be her major "qualification" here!

I guess being a "maverick" means that teen pregnancy is now AOK in the Party of Moral Rectitude and Family Values (this goes waaaay beyond "flip-flopping"). There, see how easy sarcasm is? Even an Alaskan could do it!

What a BUMMER! My head hurts.

EDIT 9/05: Lest you think this is all hot air, here's the FAQ.

If my wife registers to vote as a Democrat

2008-08-29T16:47:00.004-04:00

...does that mean we have to listen to NPR and spout centrist platitudes during breakfast every morning?

And for the record, I am so tired of these idiot PUMAs reinforcing stereotypes about "hysterical, irrational women". Now John McCain has given them cannon fodder by picking the hottest woman in politics as his veep. Imagine the visual juxtaposition at the VP debates. Joe Biden might as well show up in a wife-beater with a beer in his hand.

I'm also so sick of Clinton narcissism I could punch someone. But What Would Barack Do?

The characteristic of rambliness

2008-08-13T11:55:00.013-04:00

"The characteristic of meaning is that not everything has it."
-Jean Baudrillard, The Lucidity Pact

I've been thinking about this for about a year and a half, and I'm still not sure whether it's true. There are three possibilities: everything is meaningful, nothing is meaningful, or some things are meaningful. Baudrillard dismisses the first two. My worldview dismisses the second (disciples of Richard Dawkins can stop reading here). It's not a question of whether meaning is intrinsic or constructed (or both). The question is, when interpreting the basic events of our daily lives, which is more burdensome: a knowledge that Everything is meaningful, or the task of determining what is and isn't?

Take, for example, our obsession with self-knowledge:

This is the Wordle visualization of the content of this site for the last year. Is there meaning in the fact that the largest word is "people," seemingly incongruous because of my extreme introversion? If I knew that it was meaningful, but could have no grasp of that meaning, would that be worse? And that's only considering one word in the hierarchy...

This is where you call me a loser for thinking about this.

Ideal living is often summed up in trite phrases, like "live every day like it was your last," or, "look for the diamond in the rough," but these don't work in practice because they amount to veiled propositions about meaning. The propositions themselves usually remained obscured and unexamined, so we can never really accept or definitively reject the aphorisms. Of course, now that I've criticized the conventional wisdom, I'm supposed to offer a different spin on the same "truth." But I don't have one.

The reality is that everyone has a set of presuppositions about whether events and things are meaningful, and 90% of the time these presuppositions are not examined --- because to do so nearly guarantees unresolvable internal dissonance and paranoia.

I think this emergent self-examination is what happens to many academics somewhere between their 2nd and 4th years of graduate school. Like groundhogs, most of them see their shadow and run back into the hole (the hole is called "the tenure track"). It usually arises because of a question about whether their epic thesis on a clay pot from a 2nd century Welsh town is truly significant labor.

Yet we can't dismiss significance and meaning out of hand, because we all crave transcendence on some level. Everyone has reached momentary heights of blissful interconnectedness and holistic epiphany --- maybe while listening to a moving piece of music, or experiencing genuine intimacy with another person for the first time --- which tell us that either there is or ought to be Meaning beyond survival. Whatever it is, we want it.

The grapefruit(s) of doom become visible

2008-07-28T22:22:00.003-04:00

They paid us a visit in Melbourne.

I've been reclusive lately, building things mostly (when I'm not working on Rosetta mixing/mastering). Usually I say that I'll photo-document my DIY projects and post about them here, but it never happens because I like the building process too much and don't want to ruin it by having to take pictures every 15 minutes. I post links instead.

These are some of the things I've been working on:
"Flexy rack" (a more tasteful variant), passive sealed subwoofer driven by a third bridged-mono amp in an existing active bi-amp setup, supertweeters using vintage 70s KSN1005 piezos, an outboard effects rack for my guitar set up (I will post new maps of that soon), and a DIY power conditioner.

If by some chance you want help working on something similar, don't hesitate to get in touch.

Australia 3

2008-06-30T00:30:00.004-04:00

All finished; going home in 18 hours. It's nearly impossible to reflect on such relentless sensory stimulation (even in the quiet at the end) without some distance from the events. I don't think I'll understand what happened here for a while.

In a tangible plane, this has been a very successful tour. Every show has had higher attendance and sales than we normally expect in the U.S., and four of them had higher sales than any show we've ever played in our own country. That being said, it's going to take a lot longer to evaluate the emotional and spiritual impact of the trip. In reaching so many people in such a short time, I can't tell who's giving and who's receiving, or to what degree it's an exchange. I'm stretched thin and exhausted, but vaguely satisfied, for the moment.

Australia 2

2008-06-25T19:42:00.002-04:00

I'm in Adelaide now. I don't know what to say.

Australia

2008-06-20T23:00:00.002-04:00

Byron Bay, Australia, at sunrise on 6/20 (on a long drive from Brisbane to Newcastle). I should add that I'm having a wonderful time, both internally and externally.

Southern Hemisphere

2008-06-18T23:08:00.001-04:00

I'm in Australia!

Ugly men in vans

2008-06-06T23:46:00.004-04:00

Engineer / Giant / Rosetta, 5/23-6/1

Since a lot of you have been asking, I'll be in Australia from 6/15 to 7/1. I have no idea what to expect. If it's half as fun as the Engineer/Giant tour, I'll be happy.

I'm getting old

2008-05-28T09:06:00.005-04:00

I never used to complain about weird hours, no sleep, or long drives. I don't know if it's because I got married or because my inner crusty old guy is starting to become my normal outer self.

I also find myself becoming tired of travel in general, mostly because the more I think about it the more selfish it seems. This is less true of touring (where you're supposedly "giving" people something wherever you go, creating value, etc.) than normal post-college travel, but still applies. As I begin to accept my limitations and realize that I will not go everywhere in the world before I die, I also begin to see more clearly the consumptive nature of travel. Of what value is all this "experience capital" anyway, especially to anyone other than myself? Am I really going to bring home some wonderful knowledge from far away that will improve my local community? That's a pretty Platonic idea and one which is all but obsolete in contemporary globalism.

It's more likely that by traveling I'm only spreading the gospel of consumptive late capitalism. It forces a weighing of the potential benefits (to me) of worldly experience, versus the potential benefits (to my community) of staying and investing in a real home. Some might claim that their enlightened transience allows them to be "citizens of the world" and have a community that spans the globe, but I contend that most of those people simply have no real community at all, and are stretched too thin to be much more than cultural leeches to the localities they come in contact with. Their "doctrine of placelessness" is also often accompanied by virulent delusions of their own importance.

I suspect many of these people are trying to escape what they perceive to be a kind of determinism in placefulness --- whereby your homeplace becomes inextricable from your identity, and therefore limits how much of your self you can intentionally construct. Having a local connection is a block to the long-held elite-white-people value of culturelessness (unless the "local" connection is New York or London, which are just nodes in the Space of Flows). I think that's actually a good thing. If that makes me "provincial" or a "yokel," I don't really care.

Favorite words

2008-05-02T12:17:00.010-04:00

Epic
-adjective
1. noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer's Iliad is an epic poem.
2. heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war.
3. of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epic proportions.

Brutal
–adjective
1. savage; cruel; inhuman: a brutal attack on the village.
2. crude; coarse: brutal language.
3. harsh; ferocious: brutal criticism; brutal weather.
4. taxing, demanding, or exhausting: They're having a brutal time making ends meet.
5. irrational; unreasoning.
6. of or pertaining to lower animals.

Nitro
-adjective
1. Chemistry. containing the nitro group.
2. Colloquial: describes a person, place or thing as being unequivocally, quintessentially spectacular and dumbfounding (UD).

Granola
–noun
A breakfast food consisting of rolled oats, brown sugar, nuts, dried fruit, etc., usually served with milk.
-adjective
A person who dresses like a hippie, eats natural foods (granola), and is usually a Liberal, but in all other ways is a typical middle class white person, and is likely to revert back to being straight when they finish college (UD).

...and, I almost forgot (gasp! thanks, egalitarian-liberated-life-partner!):

SALT
-noun
A crystalline compound, sodium chloride, NaCl, occurring as a mineral, a constituent of seawater, etc., and used for seasoning food, as a preservative, etc.
-interjection
1. expression of distaste or unhappiness about a situation (UD)
2. describing something unfortunate or unfavorable happening, or one's angered mood (UD).

No April fool

2008-04-01T12:23:00.004-04:00

Science can explain these things, but it can't interpret them. You have to step outside of time (chronos) and into Time (kairos) to be present to something this powerful. Land and text both want to be read and understood. I felt afraid when I realized this, especially since the realization only came while unprotected, at the mercy of the environment.

Getting married

2008-02-28T11:27:00.007-05:00

I'm getting married in two days. I don't feel that I'm losing anything by entering into the institution. It's a kind of death, but one that's desirable, insofar as there's something worthwhile to be gained on the other side. I don't have cold feet or anything, just a sense that an ending is approaching.

(Again, to reiterate: everyone is invited to the wedding on Saturday)

The hookah

2008-02-21T10:42:00.023-05:00

This issue has come up in conversation on multiple occasions in the last couple of weeks, as well as occasions in the last two years, and I feel a need to address it with the relevant research attached.

I am repeatedly surprised by the number of intelligent, educated people --- who know smoking is harmful and would never touch a cigarette --- who smoke hookah and think nothing of it. If you're a regular smoker, I'm not talking to you. This is directed at people who "know better" than to use tobacco in its more pedestrian forms, and yet show a wealth of ignorance and misinformation when it comes to more "exotic" forms. But smoke is smoke, and tobacco is tobacco.

Let's address the misconceptions each in turn:

1. Shisha tobacco doesn't have any nicotine or tar, or those nasty additives in cigarettes.

Wrong: tobacco contains nicotine in any form, including chewing tobacco. Nicotine, however it is delivered, is extremely addictive. As for tar, any smoke contains tar because it is tar. Tar is the particulate matter (as opposed to gas) that you can actually see, which makes up the smoke --- it's just called tar when it's been deposited in your lungs. Tar contains thousands of chemical compounds, hundreds of which are toxic and/or carcinogenic (you know this already), and tar is what makes you sick and kills you. Many have used herbal substitutes for tobacco (such as Soex), most often to get around indoor smoking bans, claiming that they have none of the negative effects of tobacco. While it's true that herbal substitutes contain no nicotine, they deliver every bit as much tar as tobacco does, simply because all smoke is particulate matter --- chemically altered and discharged by burning/heating, and suspended in air. Herbal smoke will give you cancer just as easily as tobacco smoke.

What's more, a WHO study and several independent university studies have shown that in one hookah session, a smoker inhales the same volume of smoke that they would get from 100-200 cigarettes. This is because the smoke is less irritating (due to being cooled by the water) and therefore the smoker inhales far more deeply than they would from a cigarette --- as well spending much longer smoking, and inhaling much more second-hand smoke. Hookah has the reputation of being "easy on virgin lungs", but this is a heat issue only. Commensurate with the volume of smoke, a hookah session will deposit the equivalent tar of 100-200 cigarettes in the lungs, regardless of what is being smoked.

2. But hookah smoke is filtered by the water.

Wrong: studies show that the water has no effect on the smoke other than to cool it down, enabling deeper drags. This makes sense because as the bubbles pass through the water, there is only contact on their outer perimeter, so the smoke inside the bubbles is untouched. Furthermore, the non-particulate, toxic gases in hookah smoke (most notably, carbon monoxide and cyanide gas) are also unaffected and delivered at full strength.

3. But the shisha isn't burned, it's cooked by the charcoal, so it's not as bad.

Wrong: if something is heated hot enough that it gives off smoke, chemical changes are occurring --- the same changes as if it was burned directly. Heat causes these reactions, not "fire." The smoke from the cooked shisha has all the same compounds in it as cigarette smoke, and many more. Furthermore, the burning charcoal that heats the shisha gives off carcinogens and toxic gases of its own, which only compound the damage done by the actual shisha smoke. This is probably why the measured carbon monoxide in hookah smokers is much higher than even pack-a-day cigarette smokers.

4. But the smoke is just different, it's sweet, and doesn't feel harsh to me. It's relaxing.

Wrong: shisha is plain tobacco, soaked in molasses and fruit pulp. So not only are you inhaling the tar of at least 100 cigarettes, plus nicotine and charcoal burn-off, you're inhaling burning sugar and fruit matter, and artificial flavorings. These additions to the tobacco only serve to mask its acrid smell and taste, creating an illusion of safety. The total effect is that there is a lot more muck in the smoke than even in cigarette smoke, and you're getting a lot more of it.

As to the claim that hookah is "chill" or "relaxing": nicotine is a stimulant. It makes people feel "relaxed" because it raises the level of arousal of their autonomic nervous system (ANS), giving them a feeling of being empowered and in control. Just because it doesn't give a "buzz" is not reason to believe that it isn't active on the nervous system. This claimed sense of "relaxation" is most likely related to the drug effects of nicotine.

----

All of the above information is pulled from research which is listed at the bottom of this post. I encourage you to read through it if you have the interest. From numerous studies, we know that even the smallest tobacco exposure is irreversibly damaging --- I don't need to rehash that here. There is no such thing as responsibly moderate consumption. I cannot stress this enough. Every time you do this, you permanently damage yourself. The damage may be small, but it is irreversible.

Hookah is a silly trend that will probably pass in a couple of years. Still, that doesn't negate the damage that it is doing right now to ignorant young people, who are all too willing to be duped by marketing hype and misinformation. Concentrating and inhaling known toxins and carcinogens just doesn't make rational sense. Yet hookah gratifies that singular trait of people our age --- the feeling of invincibility and the willful ignorance of our mortality. It lets people get lost in a fog of the senses, abandon themselves to something that seems at once sensually close and exotically foreign. But it's the same poison repackaged to gratify our culture-consuming eyes. Exalting the body does not mean drowning it in short-lived and harmful pleasures --- in so doing, we treat it as a thing disposable and cast it aside. Exalting sensual pleasure does not exalt the body. When we care for the body and preserve it, train it and strengthen it, and give it up for a higher purpose --- this is exalting to the body.

I'll lay my cards on the table here: I watched three grandparents die horrible, painful deaths because of tobacco use. I have very little patience with a trend that is just another disguise for the same old life-destroying product. Admittedly, I would like nothing more than to see the entire tobacco industry in utter ruin. But this doesn't come from some kind of political affiliation, or abstract know-it-all attitude, or a desire to police people's decisions. It comes from seeing, repeatedly, the slow suffering and unbelievable pain that terminal lung cancer victims endure. Earlier generations made this costly mistake because they were ignorant of the danger, but we are not. And if we gloss over the facts to gratify our fleeting pleasures or a desire to be cool or adventurous, we show enormous disrespect to the dead and their suffering.

----

A few references, in chronological order with most recent first:
ABC News: Hookahs No Safe Alternative
UNT Daily: Hookah trendy, not as safe as some may think
ABC7 News.com: U.C. Berkeley Study shows the dangers of hookahs
Letter from Berkeley Pub. Health prof, JAMA -- Exhaled Carbon Monoxide With Waterpipe Use in US Students, January 2, 2008, El-Nachef and Hammond 299 (1): 36
US News and World Report: The Rising Allure—and Danger—of Hookah
HealthDay: Hookah Smoking as Tough on Lungs as Cigarettes
Medical News Today: Shisha Smoking Is More Harmful Than Cigarettes
AFP: Shisha smoking is more harmful than cigarettes: report
NewsDaily: Water pipe use as addictive as smoking
Medical News Today: Evidence Suggests That Waterpipe Smoking Is Not A Safe Alternative
New York Times: The Claim - Hookahs Are Safer Than Cigarettes?
Times of India: Is hookah smoking safer than cigarettes?
Brunei: Shisha More Harmful
United Press International: Beware the hookah
NY Daily News: Water pipes have the same dangers as cigarettes, experts warn
The Boston Globe: Smoke alarm
CBS2 Chicago: Trendy Hookah Lounges Have Hidden Risks
Daily News Egypt: Hubble bubble points to toil and trouble
Clickwalla.com: Shisha 200 times worse than a cigarette, say Middle East experts
American Lung Association: Trend Alert -- Waterpipes.pdf
PR Newswire: Hookah Use Carries Many of the Same Health Risks as Cigarette Smoking
Science Daily: Hold The Hookah --- Researcher Warns Against Trendy Tobacco Use
Science Daily: Avoid The Hookah And Save Your Teeth

Also:
Another blog post along these lines | And another
Tobacco.org
WHO Report (linked above)

Wedding countdown & usual curmudgeonly ramblings

2008-02-18T15:41:00.004-05:00

I am getting married in 12 days. Surreality reigns! If you would like to come, the info is here.

Believe it or not, I am done with my planning work for the wedding, and not particularly stressed about it. Instead, I'm thinking about a string of recent interactions/observations wherein I'm increasingly finding --- in my fundamental disillusionment with both the trappings of corporate globalism and the silly contemporary remnants of the "countercultural idea" of 40 years ago --- that I am not alone. Not by a long shot. I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next couple of years, and whether the hopeful grouches of our generation begin to stand up and insist that "thinking different" has nothing to do with purchasing another Apple iProduct.

Stars of the Lid

2008-02-13T12:18:00.009-05:00

Many of you know how deeply attached I am to the music of Stars of the Lid. It's shown quite dramatically in my play counts, and this blog is even titled after one of their compositions. They are performing live at St. Mary's Church on May 3rd. I can't recommend this highly enough --- I had assumed (as did many others) that I would never have an opportunity to see SOTL in person, but what a gift!

I'm just as jaded about contemporary music as the next person --- this is usually true of people who make music, and I'm no exception. Yet I've been listening to SOTL for many years now and can't seem to tire of them. Their music has been the quiet accompaniment to my reveries, anxious night-watches, joyful solitudes, and "aesthetic expeditions". Their sounds have helped me plumb emotional depths I might otherwise never have known. It sounds like hyperbole, but just as the music itself is intrinsically non-verbal, I'm unable to put in to words quite how it's affected me. I am an overly-rational person, and words are my tool, my barrier, and sometimes my weapon. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, and it's difficult for me to explore or express emotion without filtering it through reason. The language of my shadow-self, then, is relentlessly non-verbal, non-textual --- and it is precisely this language that SOTL's music speaks, fluently and flawlessly.

I hear:
+The beauty of untouched spaces
+Environments to inhabit becoming equally as meaningful as Programs to be read
+Philadelphia
+The sadness of seeing a loved-one hurting
+The ebb and flow of my memories
+The quiet resolve of old love
+"Nocturnal hum"
+Wonder

It's probably also incredibly redundant to say that the Lid is perhaps the single strongest influence on my own music.

Apreludes (in C# major), with visuals, from Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline

Live "cover" of Arvo Part's Fratres

{

2008-02-06T12:37:00.000-05:00

Deconstruction is over! It is time to build!

Bethany's bike / Ohbadiah

2008-01-17T12:10:00.000-05:00

I wanted to post about this a while ago, since I finished it in early November, but that would have ruined the surprise for Bethany. I built this for her out of Ebay parts and things I had laying around. The best component find was the Miyata 710 frame (in her size, 48cm! wow) for $50 on Ebay. It came as a complete bike, but needed a new fork because of shipping damage, and most of the other parts were not worth keeping.

The drivetrain is 1/8", because that's just what I had on hand, 42Tx16T gearing, flip-flop rear hub. Not a racing miracle, but sturdy and lighter than my old aluminum road bike.

...

Nick wrote a thoughtful response to my post about placelessness among global elites. Talking about these kinds of topics, he presents himself in a much more human way than I do. He also has a picture of me picking apples and wearing goofy-looking cutoff pants. He asked me to post more regularly, though I don't think this entry is as content-ful as what he had in mind.

But here's a thought on that thought:

My problem with blogging is that I'm a slow percolator, and think about one issue for months before I have a coherent idea of something to say on it. My presented hypotheses often start with vague anxiety, unease, or a complaint, which I then feel compelled to internally deconstruct. By a quirk of personality, I subject all of my emotions to analysis that is almost scientific in its rigor (because I feel, ironically enough, that emotion must be validated, or even purified, by reason). This analysis must necessarily cast a very wide net. The ideas and arguments that end up being coherent enough to write something about are usually byproducts of the process, which are then slowly refined in conversation before I ever attempt to articulate them in a formal, organized way.

In other words, it's possible that I only have external insights because I find my own internal life unacceptable.

West coast foray

2007-12-30T17:16:00.000-05:00

10.5mm DX, from Mrs. Claus. More later, maybe.

Face smashed

2007-12-11T17:21:00.000-05:00

Incredibly, no cars were involved in the making of these wounds. I braked hard to avoid hitting a jaywalking student who was talking on her cell phone, flew over the handlebars, and face-planted on the pavement. My tooth went through my upper lip and then broke off. I have stitches inside and outside, and miraculously, no head trauma or broken bones.

This probably looks like a good argument not to ride a bicycle in a city. But let me say this: the likelihood of this happening is actually far smaller than the likelihood that you will be in a car accident. My injuries are nothing compared to the physical and psychological trauma experienced by my mother and sister earlier this year in a motor vehicle accident which was due to the very same cause -- someone else's carelessness while talking on a cell phone.

Beyond that, think about this: you can compare the energy efficiency of a bicycle with that of a car, by using calories (kcal) as a metric. A healthy human burns 0.049 kcal/minute at 15mph, or 0.139 kcal/minute at 25mph. 15mph is a nice approximation of cycle-commuting, so I use that here. So I, with a weight of 145 pounds, burn 7.105 kcal/minute @ 15 mph as I ride to work or go riding on my lunch break. This equates to 28.42 kcal burned every mile ridden, if I maintain about 15 mph.

A gallon of gas contains 31,000 kcal of energy. If I consumed gasoline like a car, I would get ~1,090 miles per gallon of gasoline! A human being on a bicycle is the most efficient machine in the universe, in terms of distance traveled per unit energy. In my humble opinion, the answer to the fossil fuel crisis is not fuel cells or biodiesel, it's carbohydrates. And if more savvy people rode bicycles instead of driving cars, injuries like the above would become far less common than they already are.

***

Addendum, 12/13/07, as I said elsewhere:

Cars do several things for us.
1. Kill people and animals and plants by polluting the air
2. Kill people by making oil into a political tool that starts wars
3. Kill people by making them sedentary, obese, and lazy
4. Kill people (this is called an "accident")

"Guns don't kill people, son, people kill people!"

Corporate Cosmopolitans and the End of Place

2007-11-12T15:02:00.000-05:00

A recent read: "The Social Theory of Space and the Theory of the Space of Flows" by Manual Castells.

Castells' characterization of "managerial elites" in information society is an interesting (though certainly unintentional) scholarly corroborator to David Brooks' "organization kids" as the heirs of the corporate world. Castells, as I understand him, seems to implicitly rule out any dissenting participation in a corporate cosmopolitan lifestyle, suggesting that complicity in its comfort and homogeneity is mandatory for entrance. Consequently, there's no such thing as "changing the system from the inside" --- you are the system you choose to inhabit. Choose wisely.

Apparently of equal importance for entrance to the elite corporate class is an acceptance of placelessness. This most certainly is not the same rootlessness that has been romanticized and canonized in Beat poetry, and lately co-opted by advertising --- although corporate recruiters would like you to think that it is. This placelessness is a sense that all places are indeed simply different turns on a single, homogenized space. It is therefore a "safe" placelessness. The idealized itinerant wanderer experiences many places as dissimilar entities with distinct historical backgrounds and contexts, and must pay a personal, cultural, or ideological cost to participate in the life of those places. Conversely, corporate cosmopolitans experience many places as simply physical sub-spaces of a single homogenized ideal space, and their experience is insular and without cost. "Cosmopolitan" in this case is a misnomer. "Monopolitan" might be more appropriate, since while these travelers are indeed placeless; they are simply participants in one global, virtual city of the elite, with outposts all over the physical world. Castells calls this the "space of flows" and depending on your point of view, it renders a historically rooted sense of place either quaint and provincial, or completely obsolete.

In his words:

"Articulation of the [technocratic-financial-managerial] elites, segmentation and disorganization of the masses seem to be the twin mechanisms of social domination in our societies. Space plays a fundamental role in this mechanism. In short: elites are cosmopolitan, people are local. The space of power and wealth is projected throughout the world, while people's life and experience is rooted in places, in their culture, in their history. Thus, the more a social organization is based upon ahistorical flows, superseding the logic of any specific place, the more the logic of global power escapes the socio-political control of historically specific local/national societies." (pp. 415-416)

...

"A second major trend of cultural distinctiveness of the elites in the informational society is to create a lifestyle and to design spatial forms aimed at unifying the symbolic environment of the elite around the world, thus superseding the historical specificity of each locale. Thus, there is the construction of a (relatively) secluded space across the world along the connecting lines of the space of flows: international hotels whose decoration, from the design of the room to the color of the towels, is similar all over the world to create a sense of familiarity with the inner world, while inducing abstraction from the surrounding world; airports' VIP lounges, designed to maintain the distance vis-a-vis society in the highways of the space of flows; mobile, personal, on-line access to telecommunications networks, so that the traveler is never lost; and a system of travel arrangements, secretarial services, and reciprocal hosting that maintains a close circle of the corporate elite together through the worshipping of similar rites in all countries.

"Furthermore, there is an increasingly homogeneous lifestyle among the information elite that transcends the cultural borders of all societies: the regular use of SPA installations (even when traveling), and the practice of jogging; the mandatory diet of grilled salmon and green salad, with udon and sashimi providing a Japanese functional equivalent; the "pale chamois" wall color intended to create the cozy atmosphere of the inner space; the ubiquitous laptop computer; the combination of business suits and sportswear; the unisex dressing style, and so on. All these are symbols of an international culture whose identity is not linked to any specific society but to membership in the managerial circles of the informational economy across a global cultural spectrum." (p. 417)

For those of us who have a developed sense of place and a deep love of our particular cities, this is a frustratingly divisive mentality. It is emotionally charged, and can be alienating. It suggests that the only thing to value in a real place is what it can offer you --- in terms of material, ambiance, and convenience. Localized communal narrative is of no value in this scheme. Corporate globalism, if it is to maximize its profits and economies of scale, must necessarily enforce a cultural and historical amnesia that eliminates local distinctiveness. If we carry this to its logical conclusion, we might as well bulldoze every city in America except New York and Los Angeles. Whatever they got here they got there, right?

...

But why is this so polarizing? I think that those of us who desire and work to have a sense of place --- who love our built environments first and foremost because they're ours (not for what they offer us) --- often feel that something is wrong with us when we are repulsed by a set of values that seems to enjoy wide acceptance among educated people. Those of us who reject or critique cosmopolitan corporate life are regularly regarded by other educated people (often organization kids) as either unsophisticated or simply contrarian.

I was angry as I was reading the Castells piece because it was validating and giving credence to many of these discomforts, by speaking into them with a broader voice that could articulate things for which I previously couldn't find a vocabulary. I don't mean I was angry at Castells, I mean I was angry because the text facilitated a transition from "I don't like this [a matter of preference or taste]" to "this is wrong [a matter of broader moral consequence]". That's a crucial turn to take. The potential disappearance of our historically distinct places into a nebulous global space is not just an abstract semantic change, not just a paradigm shift; it is a loss with a moral component. It is a tragedy.

How can this tragedy be articulated? We're generally very uncomfortable when people make broad categorical statements in a moral space. But I think the problem with those statements is not that they are broad or categorical or moral, but that they haven't gone through the process of wider validation, reflection, or scrutiny --- they're just made out of the initial emotion with no filter. What we're actually uncomfortable with is the implicit assumption that the problem is never with me but always with the world/system/whatever. But the opposite "always/never" statement isn't true either. The problem is not always with me (that is to say: not everything is a matter of taste or comfort or culture). So the question is not whether it is right or wrong to make categorical statements in moral domains (a moral question about moral questions?), but rather how do I negotiate the intersections and divergences of the brokenness in myself with the brokenness in the world? How can I tell when I'm uncomfortable because I'm broken, versus uncomfortable because the world is broken? Our hearts have valid things to say to us (this is something I have to relearn over and over) that are rooted in truths beyond just our preferences. There is a critical and beautiful process of realizing "this isn't due to my brokenness [though I am broken], I am perceiving aright, the world is broken and I can see it."

I think Castells is helping me contextualize more broadly those elements of my past experiences. It's easy to answer the question "what don't I like about this situation?" but it's not easy to say why I don't like it. In this case he pulls that deeper question into view, naming those things which are lost, and by extension, validating the sorrow in the losing. Social science is often afraid of those things which it cannot quantify (morality is a prime example), but what I appreciate most about Castells' analysis is that he communicates in a detached and factual manner, yet without being reductive. I find that exciting and encouraging --- we can talk about these issues in a way that is ultimately productive, decisive, and generally applicable, rather than just a self-indulgent and aimless expression of tastes or opinions, with no consequence to anyone but the expressing individuals.