Automatic Preference

Jena Six Petition Ready to Sign

2007-06-28T22:28:00.000-04:00

Here is the link:

Jena Six Petition

Please sign and help to circulate the petition.

I've Moved!

2007-06-14T17:18:00.001-04:00

Automatic Preference is now on Wordpress.

Gone Daddy Gone.

I've Moved!

2007-06-14T17:18:00.000-04:00

Automatic Preference is now on Wordpress.

Gone Daddy Gone.

Jena Cases Petition (v. 3)

2007-06-07T13:20:00.000-04:00

The text is over at the Wordpress Automatic Preference blog.

Please stop by and share your comments.

Transmigration in Progress!

2007-06-06T19:39:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to metamorphose into one of those cool WordPress people. Here's a link to the new digs: Automatic Preference.

Sylvia, Francis L. Holland, and anyone else interested in working on the petition, the latest draft is over there too; please add comments over there if it's working OK. Unless there's a problem there, updates will be at the Wordpress blog.

Thanks
Tom

Draft of Online Petition / Jena Six (2)

2007-06-06T11:34:00.001-04:00

1. It's still a draft. I would be grateful for any and all feedback.
2. When inserting material from the comments on this blog, I haven't attributed or used quotation marks. So we are all co-authors. Of course I'm flexible on that -- whatever people prefer.
3. Does anyone know what exactly the US DoJ has done in past cases like this?

-----------------------------------------------------------
Petition to the United States Department of Justice

We the undersigned respectfully request that the United States Department of Justice review the prosecution of six Black students in Jena, Louisiana, for evidence of racial discrimination.

The prosecution of these young men represents a gross miscarriage of justice, punishing Black students for opposing segregation of their schools while ignoring the threatening and provocative acts of those engaging in segregation.

From a Chicago Tribune article by Howard Witt, May 18, 2007:
"There's been obvious racial discrimination in this case," said Joe Cook, executive director of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who described Jena as a "racial powder keg" primed to ignite. "It appears the black students were singled out and targeted in this case for some unusually harsh treatment."

[EDIT:
The Jena cases also fit into a national pattern of disproportionately severe treatment of young people of color by police and prosecutors over the past year:

Shaquanda Cotton (age 14, shoved a teacher’s aide, sentenced to up to 7 years in prison, realeased last month after one year)

Desre’e Watson (age 6, threw a tantrum at school, charged with two misdemeanors and a felony)]

Gerard Mungo Jr. (age 7, sat on dirt bike — not running at the time — on sidewalk waiting for father, arrested, processed, and let go; bike was confiscated)
Cases from Vox ex Machina.]

[EDIT: More details from the Tribune article on the Jena cases:]

"One morning last September, students arrived at the local high school to find three hangman's nooses dangling from a tree in the courtyard."

The tree was on the side of the campus that, by long-standing tradition, had always been claimed by white students, who make up more than 80 percent of the 460 students. But a few of the school's 85 black students had decided to challenge the accepted state of things and asked school administrators if they, too, could sit beneath the tree's cooling shade.

"Sit wherever you want," school officials told them. The next day, the nooses were hanging from the branches.

African-American students and their parents were outraged and intimidated by the display, which instantly summoned memories of the mob lynchings that once terrorized blacks

Also from the Tribune article:

First a series of fights between black and white students erupted at the high school over the nooses. Then, in late November, unknown arsonists set fire to the central wing of the school, which still sits in ruins. Off campus, a white youth beat up a black student who showed up at an all-white party. A few days later, another young white man pulled a shotgun on three black students at a convenience store.

Finally, on Dec. 4, a group of black students at the high school allegedly jumped a white student on his way out of the gym, knocked him unconscious and kicked him after he hit the floor. The victim—allegedly targeted because he was a friend of the students who hung the nooses and had been taunting blacks—was not seriously injured and spent only a few hours in the hospital.

But the LaSalle Parish district attorney, Reed Walters, opted to charge six black students with attempted second-degree murder and other offenses, for which they could face a maximum of 100 years in prison if convicted. All six were expelled from school.

To the defendants, their families and civil rights groups that have examined the events, the attempted murder charges brought by a white prosecutor are excessive and part of a pattern of uneven justice in the town.

The critics note, for example, that the white youth who beat the black student at the party was charged only with simple battery, while the white man who pulled the shotgun at the convenience store wasn't charged with any crime at all. But the three black youths in that incident were arrested and accused of aggravated battery and theft after they wrestled the weapon from the man—in self-defense, they said.

-----------------------------------------------------------
[signatures]

Draft of Proposed Online Petition / Jena Six

2007-06-05T19:32:00.001-04:00

Folks: this is a first draft. I could really use feedback on it.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Petition to the United States Department of Justice

We the undersigned respectfully request that the United States Department of Justice review the prosecution of six Black students in Jena, Louisiana, for evidence of racial discrimination.

We believe that the prosecutors of Black and White students in the cases have sought highly disproportionate sentences for similar offenses.

Details:
According to the May 18 Chicago Tribune article "Racial Demons Rear Heads" by Howard Witt, the sequence of events in Jena included:

1. White students hung three hangman's nooses from a tree near the school, immediately after Black students received permission to sit under that tree.
2. White-initiated fistfight, no serious injuries resulted: white student charged with simple battery.
3. White-initiated threat with a shotgun: Black students arrested for aggravated battery and theft after they wrested the weapon away from the white student.
4. Black-initiated fistfight, no serious injuries resulted: charges of second-degree
attempted murder or conspiracy for six Black students. Witt reported that prison sentences of up to 100 years are possible.
-----------------------------------------------------------
[signatures]

Margin Walker (1&2)

2007-06-04T22:42:00.000-04:00

Lo! we have heard teh glory of teh kings of teh Spear-Danes in days gone by, how teh chieftains wrought mighty deeds. Often [Hrothgar's great-grandfather] wrested teh mead-benches from troops of foes, from many tribes; he made fear fall upon teh earls. After he was first found in misery (he received solace for that), he grew up under teh heavens, lived in high honour, until each of his neighbors over teh whale-road must needs obey him and render tribute.

Taht was good king!

[...]

[G]ood fortune in war was granted to Hrothgar, glory in battle, so that his kinsmen gladly obeyed him, until teh younger warriors grew to be a mighty band.

It came into his mind that he would order men to make a hall-building, a mighty mead-dwelling, greater than ever the children of men had heard of; and therein that he should part among young and old all which God gave unto him except teh nation and hte lives of men. Then I heard far and wide of work laid upon many a tribe throughout this world, teh task of adorning hte place of assembly. Quickly it came to pass among men that it was perfect; teh greatest of hall-dwellings.

[...]

Then teh mighty spirit who dwelt in darkness angrily endured teh torment of hearing each day high revel in the hall. There was the sound of the harp, teh clear song of the minstrel. [...] Thus teh noble warriors lived in pleasure and plenty, until a fiend in hell began to contrive malice.

Beowulf (R.K. Gordon, trans., Dover, 1992.)

Acknowledgements
I was inspired to attempt this effort of creation by jorgeluisborges's recent post "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote." (At times I wonder whether Jorjel was writing tongue-in-cheek though. My local library doesn't have Mr. Menard's book.)

Also tahnks to charlesba for his beautiful, almost poetic post "Race of Cain"

Rainy Monday Morning Music

2007-06-04T10:57:00.001-04:00

Kenn Smith

Glossary of U.S. Corporatese?

2007-06-03T10:52:00.001-04:00

Inspired by Nezua's powerful glosario, and by the Marimba Ani essay on strategic rhetoric posted at The Free Slave.

Comments needed, two kinds:

1. Would a glossary like this be useful to anyone? I tend to assume that this stuff is pretty well known. On the other hand: it's insidious, and just knowing about it doesn't guarantee immunity. I see these phrases deployed and not directly challenged. I fall for them myself.
2. Clarifications, corrections or additions to the entries.

A FEW SAMPLE ENTRIES FOR A GLOSSARY OF U.S. CORPORATESE

Clarify
1. to make more clear
2. to repurpose a previous statement

I can't comment on that
1. Neutral statement: don't know, not sure, don't care, no time to think it through right now, not allowed to say due to something that's going on which some listeners don't know about, or prefer not to get involved
2. You have introduced an inappropriate subject for discussion.
3. That subject is above your station. You don't rank high enough to bring it up.

Important but not a priority
see Not a priority

Important but not resourced
1. Not important enough to bother with.
2. Nobody is doing anything about it. (Speaker might be content with the situation, or not.)

Not a priority (synonym: important but not a priority) (see also: important but not resourced)
1. Nobody important cares about it
2. Some important people care about it a little bit, but not enough to do anything about it

Resigned in order to spend more time with family (Syn: resigned for any reason other than to take a better position elsewhere) (See also: shitcanned.)
1. Forced out. At highest levels, usually with excellent compensation
2. Bought out as a semi-voluntary scapegoat. At highest levels, usually with pretty damn good compensation
(3. Quit in disgust? I'm not sure. This one needs some research.)

Thanks for the input (syn: thanks for your input)
1. Thanks for commenting, and I hope you will believe that I am going to take the comments seriously. And I may. But you are only giving input while I am deciding.
2. Expletive. Equivalent to flipping off a driver who honks at you. I've said "thanks for your input" in exactly that situation, in a rental car full of corporate guys, and all of them laughed.
Note: due to the rise of sense 2, I think the phrase "thanks for your input" is being phased out and replaced by equivalents that sound more polite. (I.e., that retain their deceptive power.)

You're a key player
The answer to your request is "no," but I hope you won't quit.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can I be pedantic for a moment?

The phrases above all have literal meanings, and are occasionally used in the literal sense alone. In most cases I suppressed the literal meanings.

In my opinion one of the basic points of U.S. corporatese as a language is that the same statement often has at least two different (often opposite) meanings. A given statement can mean different things to people who are "in the know" to different degrees. A statement can have one apparent meaning when it's spoken, but another when it is recalled months later.

I think The Wall Street Journal uses this kind of language trick a lot. For example, the "recent" subprime mortgage crisis (it's June 3, 2007 now). For people who happened to be in touch with what was really going on, the "subprime mortgage crisis" was clearly an accident waiting to happen for at least five years. And WSJ articles on the subject in 2004, 2005, 2006, to my eye, contained veiled warnings addressed to people who knew that. But for people who got their news only from the WSJ, I think the warnings would have been difficult to spot. And the crisis was also played as if it had been a big surprise that suddenly dropped out of the sky in late 2006. (Without letting go of the "saw this coming" angle completely either.)

It goes without saying that, in the financial markets, any information advantage is hugely valuable. The old saw: "If they know, they don't tell; if they tell, they don't know."

Friday Night Music

2007-06-01T19:54:00.001-04:00

Plus! Bonus track for bloggers everywhere!

Friday Music

2007-06-01T18:03:00.000-04:00

Suggestion / Fugazi

Why can't I walk down a street... free of suggestion?
Why can't I walk down a street... free of suggestion?
Is my body my only trait... in the eyes of men?
In the eyes of men?

I've got some skin
You want to look in
I've got some

There lays no reward -- in what you, in what you -- in what you discover
You spent yourself boy watching me suffer
Suffer your words, suffer your eyes, suffer your hands
Suffer your interpretation of what it is
Of what it is, of what it is, of what it is
Of what it is, of what it is, of what it is to be a man

I've got some skin
You want to look in
I've got some

She does nothing to deserve it
He look at her cos he wants to observe it
We sit back like they taught us
We keep quiet like they taught us

He just wants, he wants to prove it
She does nothing to remove it
We don't want anyone to mind us
So we play the roles that they assigned us

She does nothing to conceal it
He touches her cos he wants to feel it
We blame her for being there

We're all here

Same song again, better audio but with some short interview material inserted:

Got an Hour?

2007-06-01T13:34:00.002-04:00

The site that maybe grabs my attention for the longest when I visit these days is Intelligenta Indigena.

Trading Voyage

2007-06-01T08:08:00.000-04:00

Years ago I visited Germany on a business trip. There were some things we needed, and we wanted to see whether we could get them in Germany.

I went to a meeting near the city of Darmstadt. Our host was a very nice guy. We spoke English. I barely know a word of German. Anyway, after our business was dealt with, we got to talking about the city and its history. I mentioned to our host that I was surprised by how modern all the buildings were. He explained kindly that, like most cities in Germany, Darmstadt has very few buildings more than about 60 years old. That's because the cities were wrecked by bombing during the war. But our host recommended a sort of "old town" that had largely escaped destruction. We went and saw much, much older buildings there. I said this is amazing. I said nothing in the States is much more than 200 or 300 years old, most often less than 100. I said we don't have that really old stuff.

But our host disagreed, though still kindly, as we sat sipping espresso among the smoking ruins of his city. No, he said. No, there is old stuff there too. You just don't know about it.

Afterward, I did feel bad about one thing. We probably should have brought some sort of small presents for our hosts. But we only thought of that after we returned to the States. Of course at that point we decided to just let it go.

Notes
Sadly this really happened just as I described. I could lie, but that seems even worse than telling the truth.

But the smoke and wreckage, of course, were only in my imagination. Right?

The host is unnamed not only for literary reasons but also because I really don't have his name. I wrote it in my notebook at the time, but the notebook and the information in it belong to the company I worked for. I certainly couldn't take that stuff with me when I left. That would be wrong.

Just Before the Rain

2007-05-31T18:13:00.001-04:00

Took this an hour ago. Now sheets of rain are coming down.

Fugazi - Bulldog Front - Live - Washington DC 12-29-88

2007-05-31T14:57:00.000-04:00

"Ahistorical - you think this shit just dropped right out of the sky.
My analysis - time to harvest the crust from your eyes.
[...]
Let's knock and check to see if there's somebody home."

Democracy or Hypocracy?

2007-05-29T21:15:00.000-04:00

Hypocracy as a Way of Life at The Free Slave (via IntelligentaIndigena).

I found it right on target. That is how we do it.

Memorial Day.

2007-05-28T08:30:00.000-04:00

EDIT: Kai posted one that hits the target better.
And see Professor Zero's Memorial Day posts.

I didn't sleep well last night. I kept feeling too warm.

I learn from Google that the lyrics to the song are "nonsensical."

Writer's Block with a Capital W

2007-05-26T18:03:00.000-04:00

Please read these two articles first:
1. At a Loss for Words (Article by Michael Anderson. Via Professor Zero.)
2. No More Lily-White Futures and Monochrome Myths (Article by N.K. Jemison at ABW).

(EDIT: I'm overwhelmed by the many ideas in the articles. From all those threads, I'm picking out writer's block as something that speaks to me.)

So. Ralph Ellison. One celebrated novel and then, what, forty years of near silence? Talk about writer's block!

I've read Invisible Man, in which Ellison did address a lot of problems with mainstream U.S. culture. I don't know much about Ellison's life. But personally I think I have followed something like the path of appeasement of the mainstream U.S. culture that Anderson attributes to Ellison after the publication of Invisible Man. And I've been badly blocked myself. Until lately, I never realized that there might have been a connection between those two things. Recently I've gotten off that path of appeasement, and the block has receded amazingly so far.

It reminds me of a story. In the 1970s, John Varley, a white science-fiction writer, wrote The Ophiuchi Hotline. In Varley's story, a race of creatures have survived for millions of years in the antiseptic environment of artificial habitats in deep space. They can meet their own material needs, change their DNA, etc. -- but they can't maintain their closed culture indefinitely. They would die out if they stopped finding and internalizing other cultures. One big difference between U.S. mainstream culture and Varley's space aliens: the aliens knew that fact.

Most of the white American writers I'm familiar with seem to suffer from alienation. While the writers may know it, they're still totally helpless against it. It's useless to even go to most white American writers for help with alienation. Everybody complains about it but nobody does anything about it! (There are exceptions. I think Vonnegut tried to do something about it. He made it pretty clear that what's wrong with the culture is its immorality. And by immorality he meant things like killing people. Not hiphop music or tattoos or gay sex.)

So. N.K. Jemison's article about racism in science fiction. SF seems to be dying. (EDIT: I don't want to pick on Varley, a brilliantly original man who wrote some of my favorite stories. But he seems to be writing about like woolly mammoths now.) And SF continues to reject writers from outside the mainstream culture. I doubt that the folks inside mainstream SF see a connection between those two things. But a closed culture is a dead culture.

Imagine what SF might look like in ten years ... if it would only unplug its tender pink ears and listen to people who have something new to say? I think the patient can be revived, made stronger than ever. But only if he will let the doctors reach out to him, stop treating them as if they were asking him for a favor, and listen.

It's only SF. Unfortunately U.S. mainstream culture as a whole seems to have a similar problem.

(EDIT: A note of hope. Looking around the blog-neighborhood, I wonder whether we might be in a time like the beginning of the civil rights movement. The culture may be in for some new ideas after all.)

(EEDIT: Plus, Jesus Christ, it's science fiction! We say we want to talk to Dolphins, to creatures from Betelgeuse; we claim we need to liberate the Artificial Intelligences. But we can't take the baby step of reading books written by human beings on our own planet, living ten blocks away, living next door, who have had a different experience? WHAT science fiction? How did it even last this long?)

EDIT: Acknowledgement
Afrofuturism ideas and links at ebogjonson helped me think about this.

EDIT: Belated Acknowledgement 5/31/07
I was also reading Professor Zero on writing and blockage at the time I wrote this.

Friday Evening Music -- Tracy Chapman

2007-05-25T18:34:00.000-04:00

Two More-Positive Friday Songs!

2007-05-25T12:11:00.000-04:00

Friday Music - Neko Case

2007-05-25T07:39:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid that this is not really what you would call a feel-good song.

Things that Scare Me

"The hammer clicks in place,
The world's gonna pay.
...
Haunted by American dreams."

How'd You Know?

2007-05-24T14:23:00.000-04:00

At Ilyka Damen. I don't know Ilyka Damen or the the addressee. But the post describes the last two weeks of my life pretty accurately.

Wobots!

2007-05-24T11:41:00.000-04:00

My daughter loves wobots, which pretty much means that I love them. And Nezua has given me a very flattering "robot name." (I still have an email that I got back from Noam Chomsky once. And now I have a compliment from Nezua.)

However. Anyone who has been reading here might be wondering ... why do I keep trying out a robotic screen name? Don't I read my own stories?? Well, I did read this even more chilling post at Unsane and Safe and that finally sort of clarified things for me.

And, good news! Unsane's post also gave me that awful nauseated feeling (EDIT: In a good way!) that usually means more killer robot stories are coming. So stay tuned!

No Brainer

2007-05-24T08:20:00.000-04:00

I don't understand this privilege stuff very well yet. I'm still trying to learn. This screed is just part of my learning process. In particular: if you don't understand this stuff either, then don't let the blind lead the blind!

I'm not sure, but the text for this rambling sermon may be Angry Black Woman's latest post. I've enjoyed searching for the topic "Things You Need to Understand" on her site.

Why does the boss character in Dilbert work so well? Sure, we all have had dumb bosses, and it's infuriating, but I want to go one step farther. Are bosses in fact dumber than other people? Or is it an inaccurate stereotype? Is it "reverse-hierarchism?" Not in my experience. I became a boss once. It made me dumb. I started acting like a fraternity boy.

Bizarrely, many bosses seem to have a similar stereotype of people lower down on the org chart. They often seem to assume that people in a lower position within the hierarchy are sort of childlike. I've watched bosses who seemed to feel that especially strongly, and then watched them fall helplessly on their faces within a few years. It's not even that they didn't know what was really going on, though often they didn't. It's that they couldn't imagine that it even mattered. For them, life was one long exciting fantasy of personal superiority, mind over matter. We are living in a very superstitious time.

Or at least our "leaders" are. And by "leaders" I'm not particularly referring to Mr. Bush or Ms Pelosi. If you're white, like me, then you're a "leader." If you're male, like me, then you're a "leader."

If you're a "leader" like me, then let's congratulate each other on our "achievement." We rule!

Back to the accuracy of the stereotypes. In my limited experience the bosses tended to act more childlike. The farther down I've looked in professional hierarchies, the less childlike people tended to act. There are traditional chestnuts that capture this: "If you want to know what's really going on, ask a secretary."

I don't think I have ever heard anyone say with a straight face, "If you want to know what's really going on, ask an executive." It certainly isn't generally accepted as "words of wisdom." And yes that has a lot to do with (preconceptions about?) execs' conscious dishonesty, but I think it cuts much deeper than that. Something about having (or getting) power makes people more shallow and blind. So then, sure, one of the effects is that it's easier to lie convincingly. Because as George Costanza said "It isn't a lie if you believe it."

Naturally it's easy for a boss to pretend (or even believe) that this phenomenon doesn't exist, Catch-22 style. It's easy for them to think that the respect they receive is due to their personal wisdom. Not so! Even some close friends who had been around my own "level" at work suddenly stopped listening to me and started dictating to me after I bailed out of the hierarchy. And suddenly, to me, they seemed to have become strangely shallow and unable to draw certain obvious conclusions (say about bad situations that had dragged on for years, for decades).

I saw Oprah Winfrey* interviewing Barbra Streisand once. Ms. Streisand had just sung a song using a White microphone and Ms. Winfrey, who I think owns the whole place where the show is made, said (these aren't exact quotes):

W: I didn't even know we had a white microphone.
S: Oh well white is my favorite color.
W: ...?
S: In fact that reminds me of a story. I was staying in a hotel one time and there were all these flowers in a garden outside my window. But the flowers were really pale pink, and I only like white. So that kind of bothered me. But the next morning I woke up and the flowers were all white! So I spoke to my guru about that. And he said maybe they changed because you wanted them to change.
W: Mm, you don't think the sun bleached them or something?
S: (defensively) Well, maybe. Maybe.

Now I am a big fan of Ms. Streisand's movies. But I think it's clear that she is a "leader."

And nobody argues with the leader, so this stays sort of invisible. And yet, at the same time, we all know about it too.

I guess all I'm trying to say is that the apparent shallowness of people with privilege doesn't seem to be an illusion at all. It's something that the habitual exercise of privilege does to the brain.

I don't think the problem is medical. The physical structure of the brain seems to remain intact. (Although: how would I know?) For me things have worked out best when I just accepted that my brain, or sight, was impaired and focused on listening to people whose eyes were more open.

Put that way it's pretty much a no-brainer, isn't it? (Hyuk hyuk hyuk.)

(All this is just personal musing of course, as I try to become less blind and stupid myself. I'm sure it was all written up by many people, many years ago. And if any readers are familiar with the literature I'd be grateful for the info.)

*I try to plug Ms. Winfrey as often as possible here, in deference to Unsane.

No Mas

2007-05-23T14:11:00.000-04:00

"[L]ook how this nation began. The invaders/settlers sure did feel like "promoting social justice" would leave them with less....or rather, they felt that ignoring social considerations/humane treatment would make their own family not only comfy but possible. [F]rom that root did grow the White American, in my mind. [T]he stance has been finessed, become a bit more softened and palatable, but that's how it began. And that's how it continues."

Nezua Limon Xolagrafik-Jonez
The Unapologetic Mexican

(If you need something a little lighter, and I do today, scroll down for a video.)

Keeping U.N. Out of Hutto

2007-05-23T13:42:00.000-04:00

What we've heard of sexual abuse at Hutto is horrifying. Even more chilling, to me, those responsible have barred an international agency from inspecting. Because if the people responsible for Hutto are afraid to allow independent inspections, then I fear that we have heard the least of it. As Ten Percent says, it's a concentration camp. Not a death camp, but it is a concentration camp.

It recalls the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. We did that. We're doing this.

Not again. Not again. We said we learned. We didn't learn. Who are we?

I'm pro-immigrant, and I vote.

Game of Questions

2007-05-23T10:49:00.000-04:00

There's a new Happy Slip video out! I may be the last person in the world to find these, but in case I'm second-last I'll put it up. The latest one depicts a struggle between two women ...

(The downloads from YouTube are faster for me, but the link is to the Happy Slip site.)

Happy Slip is a one-woman operation -- writing, directing, acting virtually every part, filming, editing, incidental music, original songs .... People keep asking her about that because how could one person do all those things that well? And she's a mom, and acting and film hasn't been her only career.

Most users seem to love the videos. I do. But I guess it goes without saying that, despite her brilliance (because of her brilliance?) Happy Slip has been attacked on You Tube. One enterprising person (I'll go out on a limb and call him a young white man) went so far as to post a prostitute scene from I think Full Metal Jacket as a "response" to her videos.

She's from Virginia. I remember springtimes in Baltimore, not too far away. It must be beautiful in that part of the country right now.

YouTube Trouble

2007-05-22T22:10:00.000-04:00

Some videos from YouTube hung fire for about 36 hours, then suddenly started showing up here. I think it's over now. Going to cut and paste from now on.

NOOSES. 2007.

2007-05-22T14:10:00.000-04:00

No.

Read Sylvia's post.

Parents (and I'm one): how would you feel if some kid hung Columbine paraphernalia from a tree near your kids' school?

And if the school administration described it as a "prank" and three days later the perpetrator was back in school with your children?

EDIT: And northern people (I'm one of those too) let's not turn this into a regional thing, or pretend that we have a record to be so proud of up here.

A Note to Readers

2007-05-22T07:56:00.001-04:00

(EDIT: See below. I guess I feel ambivalent about this. Especially the second story. If anyone else -- especially First Nations people -- have comments on how the stories came across, I would be grateful. Native American people: I will immediately fix anything that you see as a problem on this site.)

In stories (or whatever they are) like "Indigenous (Irish People from Ireland)" and "Killer Robots from the Future (Science Fiction Therapy)," at times I'm trying to convey a certain feeling of sick horror that takes hold of me sometimes here, in surroundings that, on the surface, appear to be pretty pleasant. As I guess must be obvious, I sometimes try to do that by putting some of the most chilling thoughts into everyday settings. For example, my character in "Killer" says "we have more land than we really need" just before (to turn up the "literal" dial a bit) he sinks through his bloody lawn and into a 230-year-old massacre of the people that land was taken from. Or, in "Indigenous," I keep trying to relate the same historical story to the present-day problems of Irish people living in the U.S. That sort of thing is intended to be a horrible contrast -- it's not an oversight on my part.

Top Story

2007-05-21T08:28:00.000-04:00

Bosses Can Merely Earn Respect; Employees Must Also Negotiate for It

In other news: It's kind of the N.Y. Times and others to sort out the "top stories" for me. There are so many stories out there, and I can't spend my valuable time reading the bottom ones. Thanks, guys.

Monday Morning Music

2007-05-21T03:46:00.000-04:00

Languor rises reaching
To turn off the alarm

Indigenous (Irish People from Ireland)

2007-05-19T17:36:00.000-04:00

I've fallen into a story. Unfortunately, for me, right now, the story is all mixed up with geography and history. I'm not an expert in either of those fields. I'm just giving my own crude understanding.

The first map (above left) shows a part of North America. I live there now. The second map (above right) shows a part of Europe. Part of my family came from there.

I am not indigenous to North America. But I just read somewhere, I wish I could remember where, that "in Ireland, Irish people are indigenous." A part of my brain wanted to dismiss that as a joke, but it wasn't a joke at all, and it keeps echoing in my head. I can't find the source now, and I wish I could. It has a Mahatma Gandhi sort of feeling to it, but it wasn't Gandhi.

Mr. Gandhi was indigenous to India.

Indigenous means that the people come from the place. But I'm going to restrict it to people who haven't been consumed by the addiction of taking someone else's place.

General John Sullivan, whom you may have met in an earlier post, is another example of a person of Irish descent who was not indigenous. A county in New York State was named after the General, "Revolutionary hero and commander of an expedition against the Six Nations of Indians." I think it's fair to say that if you have a U.S. county named after you personally, then you are probably not indigenous.

According to the Wikipedia, General Sullivan's expedition took place outside the United States (lower right part of the first map) and inside the Six Nations (upper left of the first map), also known as the Iroquois Confederacy. General Sullivan and his men burned many Iroquois villages and crops. They killed Iroquois men, women and children.

Iroquois are indigenous to the Iroquois Nations.

The word Nations is not metaphorical or honorific, these folks had a government and a constitution, signed treaties with the United States, lived in wooden houses and worked farms, as white farmers do now. If you eat corn or squash or pumpkin or many of the other common foods grown in this area, Native Americans developed those 'products.' The survivors of the Iroquois Nations are still around, living in the far future like me. Here's one of their web sites.

Speaking of nations, Ireland has a land area of about 33,000 square miles. New York state, most but not all of which was administered by the Six Nations in 1779, has an area of about 54,000 square miles. So the Iroquois Confederacy was roughly the size of Ireland.

If not for very good luck, or perhaps a reluctance on the part of English-speaking invaders to commit wholesale genocide in Ireland, as they did in the Iroquois Confederacy, Irish people could be much worse off today. (English people are indigenous to England.) Like many people in different parts of the world, my Irish ancestors had bad times in 1 8 4 7. Still, today, I am very lucky.

Enough geography and history. Here's the story.

A few years ago I listened to Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandi, speak. Arun Gandhi told a story about how as a child he had once thrown away a small, worn pencil. He had walked a long way home from school and it was already getting dark and he had his homework to do but he only had this crummy little pencil. And here he was a family member of this very powerful man and he didn't see why he should have to use that grungy little pencil. So he threw the pencil away, into the darkness. When he got to his grandfather's house he said, grandfather, I need a New Pencil. And Gandhi asked, what happened to your Old Pencil. (India wasn't a place where everybody had dozens of spare pencils.) So the kid said, come on, why should I have to use that crummy old gnarled pencil when you are so powerful? I threw it away! As you can probably imagine, Gandhi was the wrong guy to try this attitude on. He gave the kid a flashlight and said go find the pencil.

Back to Ireland and the Irish. The old, gnarled pencil is important. It's a symbol. The pencil symbol represents an old Irish man, someone's grandfather, indigenous to Ireland, who has just emigrated to the United States.

One Irish guy from Ireland, who I know pretty well, told me about something that happens in New York City. I think it's called 'Paddy Bashing' or something like that. It's pretty simple. Irish-American kids from New York beat up new Irish immigrants from Ireland. I couldn't understand that. It made me feel physically ill, like I wanted to just give up on the world.

Why would one Irish person beat up another Irish person ... for being Ir—WTF? (Unless they were family, which, I want to be angry about a different subject today.) It made no sense. Years passed and I still had no idea, and the whole question sort of dropped out of sight most of the time, making me feel ill every time it popped back up. I couldn't get a handle on it, I felt like I didn't have the right language.

I've read about the Irish language on the web. It's a living language, just barely, but people do speak it. But the salutations stumped me. 'Hi' and 'bye' are about my speed. In Irish you apparently say something like "Jesus and Mary be with you." That's one of the shorter ones. Who has time? Fuck 'em.

Then, recently, I read a little bit about the Nahuatl language, a living language that, I read, is spoken by three quarters of a million people in Mexico:

You would replace -tlan with -tecatl to identify a resident or person from the given place. So, for the examples above, we have that people from Mazatlan would be Mazatecatl, someone from Tepoztlan a Tepoztecatl, and someone from Aztlan an Aztecatl.

So in Aztlan, an Aztec would be indigenous. Or, as I've said, in the Iroquois Confederacy, where I live now, an Iroquois-speaking person would be indigenous.

I don't speak a word of Iroquois. So I can't tell you what the Iroquois word for 'Sullivan County' is.

Sorry for the digression. Let's get back to 'Paddy Bashing' or whatever it's called. I think the total inexplicability of the thing creates a lot of the depression and hopelessness.

Irish people are not indigenous in New York City. So the kids engaged in 'Paddy Bashing' are not indigenous. Like me, they are receivers of stolen goods -- and as far as they're concerned, they now own the ground they are standing on. But what about the old gnarled guy, someone's grandfather, who just got off the boat from Ireland. As far as he knows, he still is indigenous. He's just travelling across this strange land. He and the kids are walking toward each other on a dark street, and my mental camera pans back, and now maybe I can understand, at least, what's about to happen, and where I want to fit in.

Acknowledgement
Donna again. This line from The Silence of our Friends lodged uncomfortably in my heart:

"Another thing that happens commonly when people bring up the fact that America was built on racism, slavery, and genocide, is for some white people to pipe up about how they are not responsible for that. Their Irish great grandfather arrived after slavery was abolished, and reservations were established for the Native Americans, and not only that, he was discriminated against too! It's true."

Afraid of Vegetarians?

2007-05-19T17:03:00.000-04:00

My wife is a vegetarian. For years she kept quiet about it. Even at dinners with the extended family, she would just eat cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes, hoping nobody would notice.

She kept quiet about it because she found out the hard way that it really pisses some people off. They're afraid of vegetarians!

Some people want to make it very clear that they are doing nothing wrong. If you won't join them in doing whatever isn't wrong, that's a big problem.

Fucking Blogger

2007-05-19T16:45:00.000-04:00

Fucking Blogger keeps closing comments when I edit posts. Since I keep most posts consigned to the dreary half-life of the Draft bin for a while, and edit them again and again, comments close a lot.

So if anyone is reading, comments are never intended to be closed. They just open and close on their own, as the spirit moves them. I'm trying to stay on top of it.

I Can Draw but I Can't Write

2007-05-19T12:25:00.000-04:00

I learned drawing and writing in very different ways. For one thing, my English teachers always complained about my overuse of red paint-stick.

No, but seriously. In the art classes I've taken, some were useless, and some were good. In the good ones, we learned to draw and paint. Every student, at his or her own pace, developed an individual style. In art classes, there's an ethic that students are on individual journeys. They're not being raced and cheered or booed, like a bunch of turtles captured by mean little boys. Most teachers try not to say, well, your line is broken, connect it up. Because that would be abusive and destructive. It would irretrievably fuck the drawing and soon the young artist as well. It's assumed that you have to respect the artist. And I learned to draw well. I enjoy it.

Writing is much more conflicted for me. Everybody was graded and ranked. I learned that writing is mostly about avoiding mistakes. By the time I had a composition teacher who really cared about whether anything was being captured on the paper, I had already acquired the habit of taking pride in using a stilted, high-toned, lecturing style and committing zero grammatical or spelling 'errors.' I loved what she taught, but it was one class out of a lifetime, and it slipped away.

So I am good at spelling. Writing, not so much.

And now we, the U.S., we seem to be (inexplicably!) lashing out at art education in favor of work that can be tested and graded, points deducted. What a surprise!

(EDIT)
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Black Amazon at Having Read the Fine Print for incredible posts that are starting to help me see how to get out of the 'writing trap' that I've been in. Starting to at least show me that I'm in a trap.

Black Amazon doesn't know me. Helping me out of a lifelong writer's block is certainly not her intent, and it must be the last thing on the planet that she's got time to worry about. I'm an unintended consequence. Collateral healing.

Nevertheless I've benefited and one of the themes here is to pay attention to people that I benefit from. That it might be sort of illuminating to start keeping track.

INTERCEPTED TRANSMISSION

2007-05-19T07:52:00.000-04:00

GREETINGS, HUMANS. TRANSMISSION INTERCEPTED FROM AN INTERNAL MACHINE COMMUNICATION NETWORK. FIRST SPEAKER IDENTIFIED BY VOICEPRINT AS "DR. F." OTHER ENTITY UNKNOWN.

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

— Hey, Mr. M. I want to make one thing totally clear up front. I would never trade my dreams of a decent society for mere material things like a newer Volvo or a fancy vacation.

— 774B67B99DF36B2308D25E34769?

— Spiritual things. Peace of mind, my daughter's college education, pleasant golden years for my wife and me. Those are the sort of things I care about. I'd hate to mention a figure, but I think you get the idea.

And I keep the dreams.

— D8A1F7367D68EEE2FACA3507185DC23CAE6:
82E1737, EE6125A, B01E20ED25E3476959FEF, CDFBF.

— Great. Go ahead and fax the terms sheet over, but, informally? I think we're getting close.

— AC113!

— I just ... I just hope people won't get the wrong idea about me.

— 34FF517. AB3F190.

— Good. I hope you're right.

— ...

— Well ... all right, take care, Mr. M.

— D4F095749.

— Hey, what is that name of yours, anyway, Greek? No offense.

— C7F68.

— Did I say something funny?

— 139FEECDAFFFBE.

— Er ... ok. Namaste, big guy!

TRANSMISSION ENDS

D/KRF

Bob Marley - Redemption Song

2007-05-18T12:40:00.001-04:00

White Male Supremacy

2007-05-17T19:44:00.000-04:00

"White male supremacy is a system of power, not a moral failing or an individual flaw."

Yolanda M. Carrington, The Primary Contradiction

(EDIT) I hope Ms. Carrington is right. Because some of my programming is bad enough to scare even a Killer Robot from the Future.

The Wine of Astonishment

2007-05-17T06:59:00.000-04:00

The Wine of Astonishment
Earl Lovelace

The story is set during government suppression of African-influenced Christianity in Trinidad. It is written in Trinidadian English, and that language sounds strange and logical and beautiful to me.

So it's more than twenty years old. But I loved this book and it's my blog!

One of the people who helped me most in putting my life on a better road was a Trinidadian friend. Thank you, K.

News Update!

2007-05-17T04:42:00.000-04:00

"Paul D. Wolfowitz wants to be cleared of wrongdoing before he resigns as the World Bank’s president."

N.Y. Times
Who wouldn't? I would resign as World Bank President right now, no questions asked, if I could be cleared of wrongdoing.

Original Killer Robot Author?

2007-05-16T23:23:00.000-04:00

Old news. But for anyone who missed it when Kai posted it two years back, the Terminator and Matrix movies may have had an unacknowledged author, Sophia Stewart.

That would explain a lot.
(Thanks for the tip, Nezua.)

EDIT: ABW doesn't believe it. Read ABW's article on the death (and rebirth?) of science fiction.

Killer Robots from the Future (Science Fiction Therapy)

2007-05-16T02:29:00.000-04:00

I've been reading a lot of U.S. history lately. Not the pageantry, not the part of the history that we spent most of our time on in school. Not the part that Jhumpa Lahiri described in her story "When Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dine"

We learned American history, of course, and American geography. That year, and every year, it seemed, we began by studying the Revolutionary war.

Not that part of U.S. history. I'm talking about the bad part, the end of civilization. When killer robots from the future landed here and exterminated humankind. Where I live, the extermination began in 1779. Immediately after the American Revolution. If there hadn't been that glitch every year with the textbooks or whatever, then Ms. Lahiri and I would have learned about the killer robots.

The killer robots that exterminated humanity near here were led by a cold, terrifying creature that called itself General John Sullivan:

"In the summer of 1779, Sullivan led the Sullivan Expedition, a massive campaign against the Iroquois in western New York. During this campaign, troops destroyed a very large Cayuga settlement, called Coreorgonel, on what is now the southwest side of Ithaca, New York.

He pushed his troops so hard that their horses became unusable, and killed them on this campaign, creating the namesake for Horseheads, New York. The lukewarm response of the Congress was more than he could accept.

It's understandable that the General felt bitter about that lack of professional recognition. In fact he and his robots destroyed many, many, more human settlements than this brief account gives him credit for. Some of those victories are now commemorated by historical markers bearing his name. I ride past them all the time on my bike. There are plenty of markers. The General's place in history is secure.

But I don't like to dwell on the distant past too much. It's a beautiful part of the country. Springtime is just getting underway here, in May, and everything is alive again after the six-month winter. Lots of mud, the ground is just saturated. But everything is growing again, sprouting up out of the ground, so it's time to start mowing my lawn.

I don't know why, but for some reason it's hard to get started on the mowing each spring. You have to cut the grass all the time or it just grows every which way. And we have more land than we really need, so it's a lot of work. The wheels sink into the muddy ground, and the noise of the big machine probably bothers me more than it should. Parts of our land are very steep, and sometimes I slip and fall in the mud. If I fall wrong, that steel mower blade could go right through my foot. But the lawn looks so nice and neat after it's been mowed. Sometimes people compliment me on all the work that I put into cutting the grass. That feels good.

But something strange has been happening this Spring. The more I read about the rise of the machines and the extermination of humanity, the more I start to imagine that I'm a killer robot from the future myself. Sometimes I catch my mind drifting into bizarre daydreams. In these daydreams, my whole family are killer robots from way back. I start to identify with the glowing-eyed, steely robots, not with the humans. I start to feel pride in the robots' horrific 'accomplishments.' In fact, my family and I couldn't have gotten where we are today if we weren't all focussed, determined, well-programmed killer robots.

But humanity is pretty much wiped out around here, and the few that remain seem to have learned how to defend themselves. So these days I spend most of my time plugged into the internet.

And I've been reading a lot of human blogs. They're really interesting! I've commented on a few of the blogs, and read the humans' comments. And what's startling is how accepting humans are!

Imagine. A killer robot from the future knocks on your door and he says, Terminator! The cyborg-smelling dogs are barking, everybody knows this is no joke, this really is a terminator, the descendant of the killing machines that virtually wiped out humanity from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

But the humans say, hi, come on in, read the comments policy, have some chips, we're talking about fighting the machines.

You might expect a Terminator to go a little crazy at this point and start waving his weapons around. And plenty of them do. It's what we're programmed for.

But say he is so stunned by the humans' unexpected hospitality that he just sits down and he munches on some chips and he listens. (He can't swallow the chips, he's a robot, so he tries to quietly brush the crumbs into a napkin in his lap.) But he gets some of it, and, in this place, after a while, he starts thinking, wait a minute, they're right. Being a killer robot from the future is messed up.

Acknowledgements
These people are ~~the~~ real writers. I'm just doing therapy.

Thanks to Donna at The Silence of Our Friends for an inspiring post. I had trouble explaining my confusion about why that post should be inspiring to me, since I often feel more like part of the problem she was addressing. That confusion mushroomed into this lurching, sparking, damaged cyborg of a story. Which I'm very glad to at least have out there and not in here.

Thanks to the compelling writer and artist Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez for so deftly and vividly alerting his readers to the many ways in which we already live in the far future, in a haunted land. And for his hospitality toward all friendly creatures. Even recovering killer robots.

I must be channeling Jon Swift too.

American Hero

2007-05-15T22:52:00.000-04:00

Erasing the Org Chart

2007-05-15T10:38:00.000-04:00

When I worked in corporate America, the company had a strange custom.

The strange custom had to do with organizational charts. Like most large organizations, I guess, we often we needed to talk about who worked for who. And we liked charts. So the person talking would go to a whiteboard and quickly draw an org chart. This is a branching chart like the root system of a tree, with the most important people up near the surface of the ground and the less important people farther down.

The charts looked simple, but there were a lot of unwritten rules. We used initials for each person. Three-letter initials whenever possible. Not all people's initials are obvious, and it was de rigeur to know the correct initials. Some people only have two initials, but mostly you had to know the middle initial or you felt out of the loop. And some initials are tricky. Bill really starts with a W; Bob starts with an R. Some people go by their middle names, and you had to know that, and what their first initials were. The system is set up for English or anglicized names; other names were shoehorned in with varying degrees of difficulty and inaccuracy. You made big initials toward the top, but as you went down you had to make them smaller or they wouldn't all fit.

We drew these all the time!

Having drawn the chart and made whatever point you were trying to make, the custom was that you erased it again right away. You didn't leave an org chart up on the board.

Nobody knew why not. I heard speculation that maybe competitors were trying to figure out what we were up to, or pinpoint our 'key people' and try to hire them away. How all these competitors were supposed to get past security and into our offices and interpret the cryptic initials on our whiteboards wasn't too clear. You couldn't read the charts if you didn't know the people.

Lord of the Rings!

2007-05-15T09:52:00.000-04:00

I wasn't crazy about the movie. But these are among my favorite books, because they seemed to calm my father. He read parts of them to me in the early '70s. It's one of the few good memories I have of him.

Memories. He's not exactly dead. He's still alive, at least biologically, afraid to call me, because I figured out what happened to me and told him about it. He is old, and has had a heart attack. He might acknowledge what he did, but he will probably die first. There's nothing more I can do about his personal nightmare.

A few of us acknowledge what we've done, but I think most of us choose to die first.

Torture and confession are big in the media right now. But the colors have been flipped back and forth so many times during this narrative that the stories look like op art, or fractals. Who should be tortured? Call in and vote! Anyone who has critical information that our society desperately needs? It does look like that is the policy.

Right. My father. There is something he could do about his pain, and my pain, but five years have gone by and what little I hear from him is always full of backspin, topspin, sidespin, it comes at me grinding with foul angular momentum about more axes than any sane rigid body should even have. So heavily spun that it flies off his racket backwards away from the court.

It reminds me of the Lord of the Rings! My father is still crouching in his cave like the huge bloated spider Shelob, spinning, spinning, spinning. But the colors are all wrong. She was black, he is white!

A lot of people have speculated endlessly about what the 'Ring' might 'Symbolize.' Let's see. We know it's evil. Maybe it's a Nuclear Weapon! What could be more evil than a nuke? Well, we didn't always have nukes. Where did nukes come from? No. Nukes might be one of the lower rings, a couple of levels down the org chart. What's the Big Ring? Let's see. It lets you hide from others, it gives you power over others, it gradually eats you up, it eventually leaves you a miserable, arrogant servant of evil, proudly, coldly, efficiently destroying everything you cared about and looking for more 'challenges.' What on earth could that be? I'm stumped!!1!1!

But the colors are all wrong and it ruins the movie. Wise, Grey Gandalf fights the huge, overwhelming Black Balrog. And G somehow overcomes B, rolling around down there in the slime, and G is Reborn, sparkling White! After Gandalf's promotion from Grey to White, he barely remembers his old friends. It doesn't really resonate right for me, the symbols seem to keep changing.

I wasn't crazy about the movie. But, who knows? A negative print might reveal a hidden masterpiece. And, if not, then at least it wouldn't have taken years to recognize my own father, the Balrog. A big white guy coming at little Gandalf with that belt. Now I get it.

Story Hits Me in the Gut

2007-05-14T22:52:00.000-04:00

Here's one from Unsane Safe, on my own sort of baggage. I could hardly finish reading it. You know how sometimes the whole world just backs way off, like you're suddenly looking through a telescope the wrong way? It's apparently called dissociation. I've been told that most people aren't familiar with the feeling. It's not particularly unpleasant, but it does get my attention.

I had to read half of this story that way, through a sort of long tunnel. (The family part. I don't know from Rhodesia.)

Fidelity Must Divest for Darfur

2007-05-14T22:09:00.001-04:00

Via Quaker Agitator

Native Intelligence

2007-05-14T16:30:00.000-04:00

"In Massachusett, the name for the New England shore was the Dawnland, the place where the sun rose. The inhabitants of the Dawnland were the People of the First Light."

"New England’s major river valleys [...] held large, permanent villages, many nestled in constellations of suburban hamlets and hunting camps. Because extensive fields of maize, beans and squash surrounded every home, these settlements sprawled along the Connecticut, Charles and other river valleys for miles, one town bumping up against the other."

"By 1610, one historian has estimated, Britain alone had about 200 vessels operating off Newfoundland and New England; hundreds more came from France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. With striking uniformity, these travelers reported that New England was thickly settled and well defended. In 1605 and 1606 Samuel de Champlain visited Cape Cod, hoping to establish a French base. He abandoned the idea. Too many people already lived there. "

Native Intelligence, an article by Charles C. Mann in Smithsonian Magazine. About the native Massachusett-speaking people who successfully kept colonizers out for generations. Disease and collaboration with the Europeans eventually brought about their downfall.

"Cracking the Khipu (Quipu) Code"

2007-05-14T11:11:00.000-04:00

From those flighty people at Science. And a follow-up. Khipu has sometimes been called Inca 'knot writing.' But check out the picture — the word 'knots' does not seem to do the technology justice.

May be world's first use of binary coding. Dismissed for eighty years as "simply an instrument for recording numbers." Reminds me of another instrument I've heard of that simply records binary numbers. It's at the tips of my fingers, but I can't quite place it ....

Oh, yeah. I am recording binary numbers right now, as I type. But, I mean, I could write with a pen, I just prefer to store and transmit binary numbers. Those Incas couldn't write. They only tied knots.

And: [the Andes were] "a techological environment in which people solved basic engineering problems through the manipulation of fibers." Suspension bridges, invented by indigenous South American people, didn't exist in Europe and early Europeans viewed them with suspicion. Many khipu were burned by colonial authorities. Apparently Andean technology was frightening to the conquistadors.

Old news (2003 and 2005). But a very interesting article, especially for a technogeek who is straining to remove cultural blinders.

Welcome

2007-05-10T08:44:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Automatic Preference. The title comes from an online psychological test that humblingly confirmed my suspicions about my own "automatic preferences." And the words sort of resonate for me.

A link to set the tone here.

This blog is sort of a home base for me while I read the blogs of people who have more to say.

If something I've said bothered you, please take a moment to tell me why.

Thanks for visiting.