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August 25, 2000
It's SCIENCE!
Selected headlines of articles on intelligence from brain.com
Smarter teens delay having sex Mar 03, 2000 (Reuters)
Parents influence IQ more than birth weight does Jul 20 (Reuters)
Surprisingly Smart: Hollywood's Educated Icons
Childhood intelligence linked to timing of menopause NEW YORK, Jul 21,1999 (Reuters Health)
First impression usually right when it comes to IQ Jun 12, 2000 (Reuters)
Spanking may affect IQ NEW YORK, Aug 05, 1998 (Reuters)
Harsh Discipline Hurts IQ NEW YORK, Aug 19, 1995 (Reuters)
Genetic manipulation boosts mouse IQ NEW YORK, Sep 01, 1999 (Reuters Health)
Breastfeeding linked to higher IQ NEW YORK, Sep 22, 1999 (Reuters Health)
Supplemented formula ups infant intelligence NEW YORK, Sep 07,1998 (Reuters)
Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids supplementation associated with infant intelligence WESTPORT, Aug 28,1998 (Reuters)
Dieting Lowers IQs of British Girls
Intelligence Related To Risk For Posttraumatic Stress Disorder WESTPORT, Mar 31,1998 (Reuters)
Education may protect against dementia NEW YORK, Jul 13, 1999(Reuters Health)
Larger parietal lobes explain Einstein's superior intellect WESTPORT, Jun 18,1999 (Reuters Health)
(I look at this, and wonder, who are their investors? Well, Bausch & Lomb execs are on their board, and the rest seems to be made up of media people. All of them experts on the brain, mm?)
Posted by me at 4:17 PM | Comments (1)
August 19, 2000
Ira Glass/John Linnell Fans Rejoice!
Even if you love They Might Be Giants a lot a lot, I bet you haven't heard this one. TMBG sings "I'm Sick" (Of This American Life) on This American Life in 1998. I can't believe that after five years of very smart people telling me to listen to that show, I still haven't done so.
TMBG is playing in Brooklyn tomorrow morning. And when I say tomorrow, I really mean when I wake up, which is still today, Saturday the 19th. And when I say morning, I also mean within five hours of when I wake up, which, seeing as I don't plan to get to bed anytime soon, is probably going to mean afternoon.
Posted by me at 1:40 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2000
Proposal for IMC dispatch
I've finally hacked together a proposal for how the IMC should manage its information better. It's very technical (not like it involves deep knowledge of a computer; this is just really the brass tacks of it, and who's interested in brass tacks except carpetlayers?), so most may not find it interesting. Not only that, but it's probably the most unedited piece of work I've exposed to the public eye in a while. Pretty sad considering it could be written in the form of a high-school thesis paper. I just didn't take the work to organize it. But I'll be cleaning it up and changing it as people weigh in with their opinions and suggestions.
Posted by me at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2000
Detritus: Do YOU Know The Way To San Jose?
Monkeys!
it's SCIENCE, you know!
* * * * *
Things I learned at work today:
If you walk into a room when someone is talking about you, you will have a long life.
If you hold the toes or fingers of a new baby, you will be its godparent. (I think I misunderstood this slightly.)
Posted by me at 10:59 PM | Comments (2)
Detritus: Boricua Hasta La Muerte!
well, not really. I just said that because Frankie Ruiz was singing it, and because no matter how fluent they are in Spanish, most of my Californian friends probably won't understand what it means. Puerto Rican is not the same thing as Mexican, a lesson Martin Espada was at pains to teach us, and one that is expanded for me every day at work and on the dance floor. Among the things I'm coming to enjoy: the names-- Milagros, Cruz Maria, Santa, Grisele; mamí mamí todavia mamí, of course; ferocious defense of one's mother and children; I'm even getting more comfortable shaking my tetas while dancing.
* * * * *
We had a successful performance of The Surveillance Camera Players today. Chase even got capture from the webcam. I am very very visible in a few of the shots-- my back's to the camera, I'm roughly dead center holding a sign by my legs; I'm wearing a black top which appears to have four shoulder straps; I have short hair right now. vanity vanity.
* * * * *
OK, what I intended to say yesterday about writing goes with what I did say about being nothing more than a conduit for information: Not something, I think, that people of older generations will understand. But I read two or three blogs every time I hit Blogger. I read a half-dozen humorous comments in every Slashdot forum. The fact of the matter is that when we write we no longer work within a model where the best work ostensibly reaches more people's eyes based on its merit. We aren't even living a model where you can hope to filter information alone. There are so many sources of it. I could write for the New Yorker, sure (eh heh heh. it feels so comfortable to be delusional.) But what does that mean now?
I want to do the kind of writing Joseph Mitchell did for the New Yorker (well, what red-blooded young non-fiction writer DOESN'T, I mean for God's sake that's all we were given to read if we made the seductive mistake of taking classes in the field)-- that is, I want to write about weird people. I like Tom Wolfe, too, in his journalist years-- my copy of The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby has split down its spine and is shedding pages, it's so well-loved-- and I want to do like that, record cultures. But I remember what Len Glick encouraged us to think about in the ethnography class I took with him at Hampshire. That was: there are always issues of representation, of intent and bias and misunderstanding, when someone outside a culture writes about what goes on within it.
Unless you're a hardcore devotee of journalistic "objectivity," so much so that you feel someone's got to be out there evan-handedly monitoring other folks to get an unbiased story... well, I don't see the point in writing about other cultures anymore. Why not just empower them to make their own website? Personally, I don't think I have anything special to add to a situation by giving my take on it. Take the protests. In Philly, and in DC, and now in LA there are so many video cameras everywhere, so many still cameras and so many people preparing articles, that I don't think adding my voice will change the status of the world one way or another.
that's general cynicism talking, actually. After six months working for an agency which ostensibly should empower at least some of the clients it serves (maybe the ones who are getting job training?) and seeing the red tape and the unbelievable complexity of the problems of the people who come through our doors, I don't feel like I'll be able to make any change for anyone, maybe not even myself. I don't have the staying power for it.
so now I have to figure out how to extricate myself from the last three years of declarations that I would do nothing that wouldn't advance the cause of the oppressed in some way... tricky...
Posted by me at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2000
Detritus: The Only Good Thing About Tuesdays...
...is that I am one of the first people in New York City to get a fresh copy of the Village Voice. My dance studio's right next door to the Voice, so even though my tango class at Sandra Cameron's SUCKS (the teacher is repetitive and slow to the point where my mind wanders so bad I swear I've developed ADHD) my afternoon is brightened by the text-heavy comic stylings of Tom Tomorrow. (Such a sweet man. He's posted links to the IMC! And he has pictures of the convention, too. I like them better than a lot of the Indymedia crap. Looks like LA had better puppets than Philly. Hooray for court injunctions against the police.)
Please note that the picture on the first page of the Sandra Cameron site is attributed to one Burk Uzzle. Hee hee!
* * * * *
The laundry room of the building where I'm staying in Manhattan has piqued my curiosity. There are all sorts of leftover posters and framed art on the walls... kittens, puppies, blue-footed boobies, Disney schlock, grave rubbings, mountain scenes, a tribute to James Cagney. Old architectural photos and drawings are the only repeated motif. Then there's a promo poster for Banda Lexus. Near the ceiling above the folding tables, a hoarde of stuffed animals strains out of three grates.
Who put them here? I am told that the only people who go down there are the cleaning ladies. My presumption is that the art-- two- and three-dimensional; the toys look like an installation piece-- has been rescued from owners who trashed it. Or perhaps it's donations not taken home. But the Banda Lexus poster must be imported from parts other than the Upper West Side. Whose aesthetic sense shaped the exhibition? One cleaning lady? A bunch of them, acting individually? Is there an Aesthetics Council Of Upper West Side Domestic Help that decides which art stays and which goes? And why? Is this display representative of other things they'd rather be doing or thinking about as they dump the white load in the dryer? Or was the art just convenient?
* * * * *
Damn, I love the web. I can't believe I found a website for Banda Lexus; I've never heard of them before. Not that it was really worth the trouble-- it seems to be mostly merengue, tho the site suggested it might be bachata, and all the clips are some 30 seconds long because whoever's providing this, like so many entities out there, will be damned if they're going to provide content without getting paid for it. Ecch. May I recommend instead Tito Puente? (not that the 30-second problem is solved here...)
I should explain to those of you who haven't seen me in over a year that I listen to Spanish language radio now, just out of sheer cussedness. This has its advantages and drawbacks. Advantages: I defy demographics-- HAH!-- and if the lyrics are insipid, I can't tell, because my Spanish just ain't that good. The drawback is that if I like a song, I rarely manage to catch who it's by. No problem, though. The folks at work are giving me recommendations. I have a whole stack of CDs from the Bertelsmann Monopolistic Guys mail order Ritmo y Pasion catalog I should go through now.
* * * * *
I meant to post some thoughts on writing in this day and age tonight, but frankly I have spent the whole day, like I spend all days, gorging on information and spewing it back out again and I can't take sitting in front of this here glowing screen no more. I tell you: the New Yorker on the subway; all day at work digesting textbooks on child development and turning them into lesson plans; email and scanning headlines if I want a break; the Voice on the subway back; more email, more headlines, and a quick check of the usual suspects when I get home, with the TV on in the background. I read a book to fall asleep. I'm not a person, I'm a conduit. Information is just using me to get around. My nerves are fried. What else is there to do, will you tell me? I'm constantly attached to a monitor and keyboard.
Posted by me at 9:55 PM | Comments (0)
Technical update
It looks like my archives have not disappeared, but I am going to have to do some work to get them back into viewable shape. That'll happen when my "vacation" in Manhattan's done.
Also: Glyph says the web is dead.
that is all.
Posted by me at 1:21 AM | Comments (0)
If you were around today...
If you were around me today, I'd probably encourage you to go check out the Indymedia coverage of the Democratic National Convention multiple times, finding ways to slip it into the conversation at all sorts of inappropriate moments.
I'd also probably be playing a one-sided game of Why God Why with you. Today's topic: People. I don't get 'em. I don't get what I'm supposed to do with them. How am I supposed to choose a life partner? How am I even supposed to choose a roommate? Who do I maintain friendhsips with when there are so many people who pass through my life on a given day? Why do so many of them go so far away? Why God Why? (you see?)
cheers
Posted by me at 1:14 AM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2000
Ugly, ugly, ugly.
Posted by me at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
Apparently in twiddling with
Apparently in twiddling with my settings I have either made it impossible to get to my archives, or I wiped them out entirely. Goddamn it. I will try to remedy the situation as soon as possible.
Posted by me at 1:13 AM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2000
Notes from a Sociopath
updated since yesterday
It's cold tonight in Manhattan. Not short-sleeves weather. What happened to summer? I find myself missing the humidity.
I'm not liking the age of twenty-three. It's awkward. I wish I was older. My superiors at work are so into the idea that I need to be educated to the working world that they condescend to me at any opportunity. They see any initiative I take as either cute or threatening. A higher-up actually snapped at me the other day that she "didn't need a lecture from me on civil liberties." I tell you, it is particularly annoying to be an activist and younger than Baby Boomers. They're so fscking in love with the idea that they invented rebellion. Anything we do is cute, but it could never live up to the greatness of the Haight.
Old men in the social dance community of New York enjoy me too much at this age. I don't really want to be impolite and say, "Sorry, you're just too dessicated for an enjoyable Shag; you remind me of Grandpa;" so they take up all my time on the dance floor. Meanwhile, I feel compelled to be on the hunt myself, but I don't care enough about makeup or clothes to attract the attention of anyone young enough to have intentions nobler than just snagging the least saggy package of flesh on the floor.
I'm young enough that all these old people coochie-coo or drool after me, and yet old enough that I know better than to be rude to them. Old enough, too, that I do my own dishes and get no summer vacation despite everyone's insistence that I'm still just a baby. I hate this. Can't I just get to the Intimacy vs. Isolation part of my life? This whole Identity vs. Role Confusion thing is way old by now.
So a lot of you havent heard from me lately, and youre probably wondering, Whats Gus up to? Well, Ive been re-evaluating my feelings about porn and free speech (which I already had to do once this year when Hampshire College declared jihad on Jacob for drawing and posting this.) Ive also been dusting off what I know about workplace monitoring practices, and digging up some ideas about the Internet Ive been deliberately trying to forget since I decided my Div III was embarassing.
Why? I was accused the other day of downloading porn at work. I did not ever intentionally download porn at work. I did hit a site by accident; if you have ever used a search engine, youve probably done the same. It was one of those links whose content is not immediately obvious-- its URL didn't leap out and scream HOT BISEXUAL FORMER CHILD ACTORS CAUGHT IN COMPROMISING AUTO-EROTIC-ASPHYXIATION SCENARIOS WITH EXXXCEEDINGLY ATTRACTIVE ENDANGERED BOLIVIAN NARWHALS IN LEATHER TOURNIQUETS AND FARM MACHINERY AND STUFF!!!, or anything like that. I didnt even get enough of a look at it to see what the nature of the porn was. I hit the back button immediately.
But the computer does not care what your intentions were. Internet Explorer will eagerly direct any user to a location already visited. The network logs will record where you went without remembering that you also jumped reflexively, muttered shit!, and knocked over a glass of water in your haste to click on the back arrow.
I knew that my workplace monitored computer use. It was mentioned in the staff handbook and the contract I signed when I started work. Monitoring has been one of the biggest reasons I feel uncomfortable working there. I was tempted to make a fuss about it before I signed the contract, but seeing as I had just come out of a fracas with the government agency sponsoring my internship about signing an oath to uphold the Constitution (which in the end I realized I had no qualms with; its an oath to the government I wont take) and everyone was telling me I should pick my battles, I didnt say anything about it.
My decision to keep quiet came back to bite me in the ass. It seems another user accidentally loaded the link again (thanks to Explorers helpful tendency to recommend sites as you type in a URLMicrosoftware tattles like a nine-year-old teachers pet!), and told the boss-boss I had been accessing porn. The Techfuhrer was called to check the logs, and in doing so, he saw a pattern in other computers which had been used to access porn--all of them were machines I used occasionally, though none were logged into my account when the porn was accessed. This is why I got called the other day by the powers that be.
Over and over the boss-boss (you know, my bosss boss, il capo di tutti capi, I figure I should remain vague for reasons of covering my already-bitten ass) told me monitoring was inevitable. In our case, were responsible to the government and other bodies which give our organization funds, and we get audited for how our time is used.
Im sympathetic about that. I see what this auditing is all about: my co-workers have to keep multiple, time-consuming logs of their work, and they hate it. Weve even been asked at some point to get employees to pee in cups for drug tests; admirably, the boss-boss and her peers fended off this demand. I dont envy them for having to stand up to the people who ask us to do these demeaning things. At the same time, I know that the porn site I hit would have gone unnoticed if a co-worker hadnt complained, so Im not convinced that it would have registered on an audit, either.
Anywhere I went, the boss-boss continued, my employer was bound to be keeping network logs. Its just the way a network works, the boss-boss said, as if she was explaining Mr. Hoopers sudden disappearance from Sesame Street to a five-year-old. As in, Is will of God, girlchik; and God is so great.
Shes wrong, though I was too busy bowing and scraping to realize it at the time. If I recall correctly from my Div III, theres nothing inherent in a network that mandates that it keep track of users activities. Isnt that why Clifford Stoll is famous? Didnt people make a conscious decision to step up their monitoring efforts when his book The Cuckoos Egg caught the public eye? Or if not then, it was earlier. Someone had to write the software to keep track of network connections at some point.
The boss-boss seemed to have thought so little about how her computer use was watched that when I asked her if the company recorded keystrokes she had no idea what I was talking about. Labor scholars say computer monitoring is part of deprofessionalization, the breaking down of the walls between expectations of professionals and other less-well-paid/respected workers. I know the bosss flaming at me in this case was probably fueled by her frustration with this state of affairs.
We come to take things for granted. Labor historians remember that the decision to move to an assembly line system was taken deliberately in such a way as to disempower workers. Everyone else takes it as a necessary requirement of the machines involved. In truth, Im told, many factory machines could actually be run by a collective of people in such a way that everyone knew the whole of the process.
Why are you so concerned if you didnt do anything wrong? the boss-boss asked me repeatedly. It was an eerie echo of the question asked by the officers presiding over my arrest in DC. Why do you kids wear masks if you aint got nothing to hide? You got a warrant out on you someplace else? People wore masks for fear of tear gas, for fear of losing their jobs if they got seen on TV, for fear of later harrassment by police as they walked down the street. When I mentioned this to my mother, she reminded me that the same thing was asked of actors and musicians who refused to sign statements saying they were not Communists in the McCarthy era. Why? Are you now, or have you ever been.
I am concerned because with every recorded keystroke and each new security camera, I lose the freedom to whisper. That moment of class when the teacher looks away and I can pass a note to my friend never comes; the boss is always there when I want to talk about forming a union. I cant make the little mistakes which history washes away, and I cant plan to act against laws I think are wrong.
Anyway, saying things far briefer than this got me smacked for delivering the boss-boss a lecture on civil liberties If this is the way the working world is going to be, watch me run screaming back to academia. I didnt even mean to give her a lecture. I wanted to say my piece, and have her LISTEN, and say she at least sympathized with me and believed that Id unintentionally committed an error. I wanted a discussion! Dammit, in school if I was able to put together ideas like this the teachers cooed over what a great student I was. I dont understand this. Shutting up and sitting down is not what I was trained to do.
Theres a lot more I could say about thisanyone who Ive already told the whole story would probably agree that the sordid details of how my employers handled my transgression are much more entertaining and horrifying than all this hoo-hah. In general it boils down to this: I should be at a smaller organization, and I shouldnt be in this goddamned government program to begin with; its just not how I want to serve my country. Im sure theres legal ramifications to my posting any more on the subject, though, and so Im going to shut up and sit down now.
Posted by me at 2:37 AM | Comments (0)
August 9, 2000
Hello. This is an
Hello. This is an attempt to see if I can remove content from my blog by using the edit command.I apologize for the ugly blot on my otherwise immaculately edited work.
Posted by me at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)
August 7, 2000
(this post removed)
it's like the blank spots in the Nixon tapes, no?
Posted by me at 4:09 PM | Comments (0)
Notes From New York: The City Encompasses Everything And Puts Us In Mind Of Lost Places We Once Knew
adapted from a paper journal, one of those things you should hunt down when I'm dead.
Smalls. A basement jazz club somewhere down in the really expensive southern artsy part of Manhattan (10th st.) Not for nothing the name. Large photo of a smiling guy at the front of the room onstage, his knees hugged to his chest as if to make room for everyone else. People come in behind me and say, "Is there space behind the bar? Behind the bar?" No, there is no space behind the bar; there is no barkeep, drinks are self-serve, and a handful of people have already taken up residence back there. Place is so crowded it's like riding on the subway, everyone hip-to-hip.
Amy had promised Smalls had free juice, and I thought, Like the E-Bar back in Pasadena? but there is no blueberry juice on this coast, these are unenlightened people. The place did remind me of the E-Bar, though, with its size and its grubby walls. (Also of any number of other places-- the Haymarket and Fire and Water in Northampton, etc.) Of course, Smalls seems somehow to be much more "important." Yuppie clientele. Adult jazz bands, real polished musicians as opposed to the garage bands trying to make a name at the E.
And yet before it moved because the Vacuum King jacked up neighborhood rents, and closed because its clientele was all underage and wanted a place to smoke, we had something good at the E-Bar. Chuck Z with his surrealist prefab illustrated poetry about people with clam heads married to hippos; the open mic emceed by some humorless successor of Emmett Kelly. Chess with old people. Mismatched chairs. Nostalgic hippie uprisings like Our Nation Earth. (Really I should write more about this later.) Isn't there something inherently good in giving teenagers a haven outside their home, introducing them to the grand old traditions of arts and radicalism? We cut our bohemian eyeteeth there.
Posted by me at 12:10 AM | Comments (0)