Slavoj Zizek on the Iraq War, the Bush Presidency, the War on Terror & More

(The first part of this interview with Slavoj Zizek “Everybody in the World Except US Citizens Should Be Allowed to Vote and Elect the American Government”)

Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the Iraq War, the Bush Presidency, the War on Terror & More
Host: Amy Goodman
Democracy Now



Born in Slovenia, Slavoj Zizek has written more than fifty books and is well known for building on the work of the influential French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He speaks to sold-out audiences around the world and is the subject of an art installation called “Slavoj Zizek Does Not Exist” and is the star of two films. He was also politically active in Slovenia and campaigned for the Presidency in 1990, when it became the first Yugoslav republic to hold a free election. His latest book came out earlier this year. Its called “In Defense of Lost Causes.”

Listen/Watch/Read

Commuter Challenge Week is May 12 to 16

(My college system froze our wages for this upcoming year and they charge $360 a year for me to park in order to work for them. So I don't drive to work anyways, but for those of you that do, here is a challenge... Courtesy of Zep Valdis.)

Commuter Challenge Week is May 12 to 16

Challenge your friends, families, and co-workers to ride a bike instead of driving to work and for running other errands. Every car trip you replace earns you an extra chance to win a commuter bike to be raffled at Bike Lexington Event on May 17. Down oad the commute log here Bike Commuter Challenge

BikeEd Commuting Course – League of American Bicyclists
Wednesday, May 14, Courthouse Plaza, Main & Limestone Street, 6-8pm, Free
Considering riding your bike to work? Learn what you need to know to bike safely including bike choice, route selection, cargo, clothing and foul weather riding. A short ride of 20 minutes will be included for the commuting-curious. Contact Mike Galbraith at metro_biking (at) insightbb (dot) com

Commuter Advocacy Breakfast
Thursday, May 15, Third Street Stuff, 257 N. Limestone, 7:30-9 am
Join other commuters for a relaxing breakfast downtown every Thursday of the month. This week’s breakfast will be at Third Street Stuff. Come join in a discussion on a variety of bike advocacy topics.

Bike Tune-Up Clinic
Thursday, May 15, Pedal the Planet Bike Shop, 5:30pm, Free
Save even more dough by learning how to keep your bike tuned-up from skilled bike mechanics.

YMCA Bike-to-Work Breakfast
Friday, May 16, High Street YMCA, 7-8:30am, Free
Breakfast and drinks are on us for all those bike commuters on National Bike to Work Day. Stop by and get “energized” before heading to work.

Reminder: You Must Register to Continue Receiving Bike/Ped News
To continue receiving notifications on bike and pedestrian activities you must visit this website Bike Lexington and enter your email. You will continue receiving notifications and reminders to register your email address through May 31, after which time you will be unsubscribed. To unsubscribe sooner, you may reply to this email and request to be removed.

Kenzie Gleason
Bicycle & Pedestrian Coordinator
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government
(859) 258-3605
kgleason (at) lfucg (dot) com

Bill Moyer's Journal: Interview of Reverend Jeremiah Wright

(Here is Bill Moyer's recent interview of Reverend Jeremiah Wright in the aftermath of racist slander attacks on the Internet and the North Carolina Republican TV attack ads that used soundbites to demonize him in order to taint Barack Obama's campaign. As you should know by now I am neither a Christian or a Democrat, but I look to the Liberation Theology that Wright practices as a positive version of that religion and I admire Obama's hopeful vision for the future. It is a disgrace that Americans fear a person who speaks Truth to Power in the way that Rev. Wright does... listen to his interview and listen carefully to what he has to say... do you doubt the truths he is speaking concerning race, class and economics in this nation. In this he reminds me of the radical Martin Luther King, Jr. that mainstream America has conveniently erased from our history books.)


BILL MOYERS Reflects on His Interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Bill Moyer's Journal

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, "Who's telling the truth over there?" "Everyone," he said. "Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience." That's how people see Jeremiah Wright. In my conversation with him on this broadcast a week ago and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. Over 2000 of you have written me about him, and your opinions vary widely. Some sting: "Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American hating radical," one viewer wrote. A "nut case," said another. Others were far more were sympathetic to him.

Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist. Many black preachers I've known — scholarly, smart, and gentle in person — uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I've known many white preachers like that, too.

But where I grew up in the south, before the civil rights movement, the pulpit was a safe place for black men to express anger for which they would have been punished anywhere else; a safe place for the fierce thunder of dignity denied, justice delayed. I think I would have been angry if my ancestors had been transported thousands of miles in the hellish hole of a slave ship, then sold at auction, humiliated, whipped, and lynched. Or if my great-great grandfather had been but three-fifths of a person in a constitution that proclaimed, "We the people." Or if my own parents had been subjected to the racial vitriol of Jim Crow, Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor, and Jesse Helms. Even so, the anger of black preachers I've known and heard about and reported on was, for them, very personal and cathartic.

That's not how Jeremiah Wright came across in those sound bites or in his defiant performances this week. What white America is hearing in his most inflammatory words is an attack on the America they cherish and that many of their sons have died for in battle ? forgetting that black Americans have fought and bled beside them, and that Wright himself has a record of honored service in the Navy. Hardly anyone took the "chickens come home to roost" remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences. My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright's absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being. But it is a fact, he says, that within living memory the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study that deliberately deceived black men with syphilis into believing that they were being treated, while actually letting them die for the sake of a scientific test. Does this excuse Wright's anger? His exaggerations or distortions? You'll have to decide or yourself. At least it helps me to understand the why of them.

But in this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media — the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help — people who for their own reasons set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy; this is wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.

Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettle some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We are often exposed us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this ? this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers".

To Watch Bill Moyer's Commentary

Also:

Black Churches, Black Theology and American History

Rev. Wright "Kicks Out the Jams" at the National Press Club!

Bluegrass Community and Technical College: Fair Trade, From a Coffee Grower’s Perspective (May 10)

Special Presentation
Fair Trade, From a Coffee Grower’s Perspective

Saturday, May 10, from 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Oswald Building Auditorium (OB 230),
Bluegrass Community and Technical College
470 Cooper Drive
Lexington, Kentucky

Land of the Free?: NY Times Reporter Adam Liptak Explores America's Unique Take on Justice

Reporter Explores America's Unique Take on Justice
National Public Radio (NPR)



The United States is home to less than five percent of the world's population — and almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. Adam Liptak, national legal correspondent for The New York Times, says that's one of the ways America's legal system differs from those of other countries.

Liptak's recent series for The Times, "American Exception," looks at the ways the American justice system is unique — including high incarceration rates, the awarding of punitive damages, felony murder liability for accomplices and commercial bail bondsmen.

"Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries," wrote Liptak in his April 23 article, "Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations."

Liptak adds that prisoners in the U.S. are incarcerated for a longer time than prisoners elsewhere. The reason for the disparity is a matter of debate, but he writes that "the gap between American justice and that of the rest of the world is enormous and growing."

Liptak earned a law degree from Yale University. He joined The Times' news staff in 2002, contributing legal analysis and coverage of the criminal justice system. He also writes the paper's "Sidebar" column, which provides analysis, explanation and commentary on developments in the legal world.

To Listen to the Interview

More on the NY Times series on the American prison system:

American Exception

Davin Heckman: Unraveling Identity

Davin is a fellow member of the Reconstruction editorial collective and he just published A Small World: Smart Houses and the Dream of the Perfect Day, from Duke University Press, 2008. I like the concept of the "Posthuman Bildungsroman" because it defines something that I find to be very disturbing and that needs to be addressed critically. It points toward the difficult situation of developing through interaction with multiple mediatized environments that are mutating us, while evading us, slipping in and out, we realize and then forget, consciousness and amnesia, slipping back to a primeval state or pushing forward to a posthuman singularity. Who are you--we remember Pete Townsend screaming drunkenly into the mirror [his lyrics, even if Daltrey sings them], now we scream at the "screen" who the fuck are "we" and listen to the mediatized voices scream back at us with a multitude of answers. The Posthuman Bildungsroman reaches back to hunting behaviors, only the landscape has changed and we are discovering what we are hunting in the process of hunting... or, we start out hunting what we know and get lost and forget just what it was we were hunting... a clearing opens and confusion steps into the vacated realm.

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

Unraveling Identity: Watching the Posthuman Bildungsroman
by Davin Heckman
C-Theory



...

The ambiguous nature of the Posthuman Bildungsroman comes to its clearest representation in A Scanner Darkly. Agent Fred is a narcotics officer living in deep cover amongst addicts under the name Bob Arctor. His cover is so deep that Agent Fred must always wear a disguise to conceal his identity, even from his colleagues. As part of his investigation, he must record the everyday activities of his household. To keep his cover intact, he must use the drug Substance D and file surveillance reports on himself along with everyone else. In order to succeed, he must convince both his friends and his employers that he is Bob Arctor. His addiction to Substance D only complicates things further, a substance which has a botanical name of Mors ontologica, or "ontological death." The primary side effect of Substance D dependency is a growing disconnect between the hemispheres of his brain and a resulting split in his subjectivity. Uncertain about his actions as Arctor, he must submit to the authority of police surveillance. Eventually, he loses his job over his covert activities and enters rehabilitation. In the New-Path rehabilitation program, he takes the name Bruce, and must undergo extensive behavior modification in order to destroy his former self and be rebuilt into a functional member of society - which, in the end, is revealed as part of a police plan to find the source of Substance D: New-Path's farm labor camps. By then, of course, Agent Fred/Bob Arctor has been fully replaced by Bruce, who can barely function and who would be unrecognizable to any of his former selves.

The common thread running through these films is the idea that a self that can be encoded, erased, and re-written. In spite of the specific characteristics of each film's protagonist, they share a common identity in that they are all cobbled together from the images, objects, and information that surround them. If an inner self or authentic identity exists at all, it is in the will to self-actualization vis-à-vis the material world. These characters personalize and give the blessing of "agency" to the surface of this process. Unlike a true Bildungsroman, culture in these films does not offer the means by which one can discover a deeper, more authentic self. In the case of Memento, the external datastream confounds and distorts the protagonist to the extent that his only hope of a self is to embrace a lie. In Minority Report, the protagonist manages to buck the system, even as the image itself remains true but misinterpreted. In Paycheck, the protagonist's possessions are ultimately the only markers of truth. All three protagonists strive frantically for self-discovery, but must rely on the world of commodities, media, and representation in absence of a centered self. To return to the roots of the genre, the protagonists resemble reality television stars in that their reality is produced before their very eyes. The Fred/Arctor/Bruce personality in A Scanner Darkly seems to have totally abandoned the possibility that a "self" exists at all.

For a better understanding of the genre, it is useful to consider Scott Bukatman's concept "terminal identity." Terminal identity is spawned by "terminal culture" (which plays with definitions of "terminal" as destination, interface, and demise). Developing a discussion initiated in Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto," Bukatman claims that the ambiguous postmodern self of contemporary popular culture is characterized by a "transcendence which is also always a surrender." [16] To paraphase, terminal identity is the subject position which can embrace the slick surfaces of the virtual without looking for something deeper. The terminal subject accepts the image at face value.

If we accept Bukatman's theory of terminal identity, then we might ask what sort of "coming of age" tale these films invoke. [17] Traditionally, we have had novels where "being" is uncovered: the first type being the traditional Bildungsroman, and the second type being those which exist in opposition to the genre -- incest genealogies of the gothic, the cracking of the mystery in the detective novel, or the radical revisions of science fiction -- all of which revel in the secrets of modern society.

The postmodern "coming of age" is radically different not just in its construction of identity through an assemblage of surfaces and images, but also in its ambiguous relationship with its purposes. The reality genre appears as a representation of what really is, but it also implies its own satire by exposing the flaws of "real people" and the flaws of "representations of real people." Hence the nearly instantaneous arrival of films like EdTV and The Truman Show. On the one hand, these shows reveal a scorn for mediation and a scorn for the bourgeois culture that they aim to police. On the other hand, they are pure forms of mediation and pure expressions of bourgeois values. The self becomes only the agent of its own destruction, saying "yes" to/by affirming reformatting and the installation of new operating systems.

Unlike the traditional Bildungsroman, whose countertype was the triumvirate of speculative genres aforementioned, the countertype to reality television is more essential in its critique. The two genres of reality television and its satire do not battle over the questions of Good and Evil; rather, they battle over the very existence of the self. In this way they resemble the gothic, the science fiction, and the detective story. But within these texts, there is fundamentally little difference between tales of disassembly and reassembly: they are equivalent processes of posthuman becoming.

The twist presented in these stories is not a discovery that pertains to some other; instead,it comes in the realization of who the protagonist has been all along. Where things get interesting is in the protagonists' utter mystery/uncertainty and befuddlement as to who they might be. Rather than wondering what is concealed beneath the surface, the characters themselves are pieced together from external cues, arriving at a subjective space that is not determined by an interior state, but by an assemblage of surrounding signs. Hence, Leonard's erroneous story is written on his skin. Anderton's story is edited into a coherent scheme which fits social knowledge about crime and deviance. Jenning's story is tucked into an assemblage of objects. Finally, Arctor's story is molded to fit the narrative of substance abuse, therapy, and law. If there is an inherent, internal knowledge of the essential self, these protagonists do not seem to know it/are unaware of it.

Unlike the traditional Bildungsroman, these tales do little to affirm the value of bourgeois society as an instrument of personal growth. Rather, they challenge the possibility of individual personal growth in favor of the outward signs of a coherent subjectivity and, in the process, call into question the validity of an atomistic self. This approach to externals affirms the conventional wisdom of what we know about postmodernism as an aesthetic that is preoccupied by surfaces and which eschews depth and interiority. It also confirms the assumptions of posthumanism, which suggest that the "person" is not simply the expression of an eternal, immutable state, but rather, is the point where discursive threads converge. Personal identity is an interpretation of culturally constructed notions of subjectivity.

To Read the Entire Essay

Richard K. Morgan: Market Forces (2004)

(Just started Richard K. Morgan's novel Market Forces last night and could not put it down...)



"Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by an élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a willful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the very majority whom the system oppresses."

Richard K. Morgan interview Never Mind the Cyberpunks

Quiet philanthropist Osher donates $70 million to California's community colleges: Where are the Kentucky Philanthropists?

(Tip of the hate to Osher for his continuing generosity and for his recognition of the important role community colleges play in our democratic society. Where are the Kentucky Philanthropists? Our state legislature continues to bury their heads in the ground as the KY education system spins down the toilet. Article courtesy of Teresa Webb.)

Quiet philanthropist Osher donates $70 million to state's community colleges
By Kevin Yamamura
Sacbee

The quiet philanthropist stood beside the movie-star governor Tuesday to celebrate the Bernard Osher Foundation's unprecedented $70 million donation to California community college students.

Bernard Osher, 80, was too modest to address the crowd gathered in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Capitol office for a donation ceremony. He remained calm and respectful, always standing to the side of the podium.

But as students snapped pictures of Schwarzenegger afterward, Osher beamed about how his latest education gift could help generations of students.

"These people don't have any money, the poor people that are going to these colleges, and it makes a tremendous amount of difference," Osher said. "When you get these letters, you realize what you're doing. So $150 might not mean much to you, but to them, going to school and being able to buy books makes the total difference."

The San Francisco-based Osher Foundation has committed $50 million toward an endowment to pay for scholarships for the state's poorest community college students starting in 2009. That money will pay for $1,000 awards to defray the costs of textbooks, lab fees and other items beyond registration fees. An additional $20 million gift is dedicated toward scholarships for students who transfer to four-year California schools.

Osher grew up in Biddeford, Maine, as the son of working-class immigrants from Russia and Lithuania. His parents owned a hardware and plumbing store, where he worked with his siblings before attending Maine's prestigious Bowdoin College.

He co-founded Golden West Financial Corp., parent company of World Savings Bank, which was sold to Wachovia Bank in 2006 for $24 billion. An avid collector of American art whose collection includes works by Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent, Osher bought the San Francisco-based auction house Butterfield & Butterfield in 1970. He sold it to eBay in 1999 for $260 million.

BusinessWeek last year named Osher the 11th most generous philanthropist in the world. The magazine estimated his lifetime giving at $805 million.

Since establishing his foundation in 1977, Osher has focused on establishing scholarship and lifetime learning programs at colleges and universities. He also has made significant contributions to fine arts institutions, including the San Francisco Opera, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Osher is not a heavy political giver compared to several other Californians of comparable wealth, though he does contribute widely to Democratic causes and candidates, federal and state records show. His biggest state contribution was $250,000 to back a stem-cell research initiative voters approved in 2004.

Osher Foundation President Mary Bitterman said Tuesday that Osher "does not like to speak or to be recognized," but that he tells her every day that the foundation needs to "focus, focus, focus" – at least when they are not listening to opera in the office.

Toyia Copeland, 38, said she was laid off a few years ago from a job working for the YMCA, prompting her to go back to school. She received an Osher scholarship to the City College of San Francisco and graduated last year with an associate degree in culinary arts. She now attends San Francisco State University, while her 18-year-old daughter, Kezia Nelson, is finishing her first year at City College.

"More than receiving the gift and the scholarship for the textbooks, I'm just pleased that someone believed in me and cared enough to share their good fortune with me," Copeland said.

The donation comes as the state faces a deficit that Schwarzenegger has warned could be as large as $20 billion starting July 1, which could force cuts in schools and colleges. The Osher donation is not intended to offset the impacts of state funding problems but rather to spark an interest in giving to community colleges.

Osher said he does not know Schwarzenegger personally, though the governor lobbied the philanthropist through Charlotte Shultz, a mutual friend and the governor's chief of protocol. When he was a young bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger attended Santa Monica College, where he said he learned about economics and politics after taking English language classes.

"And I think that's why I'm such a big believer in community colleges, because when I first came over here I went to Santa Monica College to learn English," Schwarzenegger said. "Not that it is perfect, may I remind you, but nevertheless it did help."

Link to the Article

CamelsbackandForth: A Confederate Sea of Dunces

Somehow Allan ended up selling cheap chinese produced toys disguised as American icons at the great All-American lovefest known as NASCAR. Here is his cultural report:

A Confederate Sea of Dunces

Jessica Crawford: Gender Identity in Michael Blumlein's "The Brains of Rats"

(Right after posting my student's essay I came across this fascinating NPR report: Alex Spigel: Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences: Psychologists Take Radically Different Approaches in Therapy)

Jessica Crawford
Eng 230



Michael Blumlein’s The Brains of Rats revealed to me the complexities of gender definition. He explores biological, cultural, and historical differences in gender accompanied by his own opinions and experiences. The tone of this piece is clearly established in the opening paragraphs as he surprises the reader with information of Joan of Arc possibly having had testicular feminization genetically making her a man (1). This was unknown to me; it completely caught me off guard, and ultimately left me wanting to read more. If Blumlein was attempting to shake up the reader’s perception of gender the goal was certainly achieved. All my life Joan of Arc has been paraded as an example of a fierce female to be revered for her strength and moral compass, so this new information from Blumlein left me feeling quite uneasy. If in fact Joan of Arc was a man, would I still hold as much respect for him as I had previously? It is here that I realized the typical stereotypes of “male” and “female” are deeply embedded in my mind. Gender has always seemed very easily defined in my environment, so I knew this reading would prove to be a learning experience ultimately opening my eyes to the reality of all the complexities associated with gender.



Cultural definitions of gender have attempted to easily distinguish males and females. In the world I’ve grown up in you are either born with a vagina or penis and then raised a certain way based upon that. From the minute a baby is born their gender and future is predetermined for them. A girl is to wear pink, play with baby dolls, and act “ladylike” and less rugged. A boy is to wear blue, play sports, and is almost expected to have a tougher attitude and not appear “girly”. For instance a certain male professor of mine told a personal story of dressing in a dress for one day at a college campus and how the people around him viewed him as strange. It has just become a part of daily life for men and women to carry on different characteristics. Barrie Thorne states, “Children pick up the gender stereotypes that pervade books, songs, advertisements, television programs, and movies…In short, if boys and girls are different, they are not born but made that way” (2). These cultural definitions have been in place to make it easier to distinguish between male and female, but what if you are neither? What if you are living as a hermaphrodite or transsexual? What if you are someone trapped in a body with male genitalia wishing to be a female or vice versa? For example, Blumlein mentions Herculine Barbin who was born in 1838 as a female but felt as though she were a man so her sex was redesignated and she was given male civil status in 1860; but this was not accepted by those around her and she took her own life as a result (2).



Also, in As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As Girl, John Colapinto examines the decision Ron and Janet Reimer made to surgically alter their male son to a female after his circumcision procedure went horribly wrong. They based their decision on the idea that it would be an easier life for their child to live as a female because he would receive too much ridicule as a boy with malformed genitalia (Colapinto: 2001). That clearly shows how our society has not really opened up to the idea of struggles with gender identity. The battle between nature versus nurture still arises. Would it have been better for the Reimer’s to let their son remain a boy or was their choice of nurturing their child to become a girl a wiser choice? Our society has attempted to make gender a non-issue but I believe it has pushed all genders into separate corners forcing them to fit a certain mold. This has just caused much tension and misunderstanding among people who are all actually more similar than different.



Blumlein’s experience as a medical professional was evident throughout the piece as he talks about the biological aspects of males and females. Blumlein states, “The genes that determine sex lie on the twenty-third pair of chromosomes. They are composed of a finite and relatively short sequence of nucleic acids on the X chromosome and one on the Y” (4). He then goes on to compare the brains of rats to human brains. Through research, rats revealed certain tendencies between male and female rats when choosing either pure or heavily sweetened water but Blumlein sharply comments, “Sexual differences of the human brain exist, but they have been obscured by the profound evolution of this organ in the past half-million years. We have speech and foresight, consciousness and self-consciousness…In a language whose meaning we seem to share, we say we are different, but equal” (5). We see that there are differences biologically between male and female, but that does not mean we are a whole different species. Our bodies require the same needs and go through many of the same processes, yet it seems as though many cultures are afraid to accept the blurred lines between different genders. Blumlein, however, has fully embraced this ambiguity.



Blumlein openly shares his personal experiences of struggling with gender identity. He reveals his desires to experience the life of a woman. That was a bold move and I certainly have never read before of a male desiring to be female. There are many preconceived notions that a female is slightly weaker than a man, and there are certainly still people who believe men and women are not equal so why would any man want to come out and say “Yes I want to be a woman instead of a man”? Blumlein just went for it and decided to break out of the candy coated society we dwell in to reveal his doubts and struggles as a sexual man. Even his style of writing goes against what many would deem as acceptable writing when he delves into his sexual encounter with a man. “He took off his shirt and his pants and pulled my pants down…he kissed me hard and tongued me…he rolled me over, made me squat on my knees with my butt in the air…I was very dry and it hurt” (Blumlein, 17-18). This style of writing matched his content; controversial, but this is exactly what our society is in need of to better understand humanity. Issues relevant to the world we are living cannot just stay covered up and those people that do not fit into “male” or “female” should not be demoralized by the society’s desires just to keep things simple. We are very complex creatures and cannot just fit into two general categories of male and female. If someone feels trapped in the wrong body they should be able to choose a life they see as a better fit. Until we can all learn to tolerate all the differences that prevail among the human population these barriers between male, female, hermaphrodite, transgender, and transsexual will never break down.



Works Cited

Blumlein, Michael. “The Brains of Rats”. The Brains of Rats. New York: Dell, 1997. 1- 22.

Colapinto, John. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl. Newy York: Harper Perennial, 2001.

Thorne, Barrie. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993.

Al's Bar Presents: Slightly North of Center

(From Danny Mayer)

Al’s Bar Presents

Slightly North of Center talks for and by the community
(This means You.)

Price of Admission: Caring

Unless otherwise noted, all talks begin at 6:15 on Thursday

May 8: Jim Embry on Community Food

May 15: Andres Cruz on Lexington’s Immigration Routes

May 22: Erik Reece on Lost Mountains and Just Societies

May 29: Patrick Smith and Shanna Sanders on Media in the Plural

June 5: Michael Marchman on Global Capitalism and Geographies of Resistance

**Al’s Bar is located on the corner of Limestone and Sixth. For music info, please visit Al's Bar

eSchool News: Blogging Helps Encourage Teen Writing

(I use blogs as journals, archives and freewriting sites for students in my writing courses. Weblog writing demonstrates the public/social nature of writing and, I believe, provides a stronger sense of responsibility in regards to what the student writes.)

Blogging helps encourage teen writing: Survey reveals that student bloggers are more prolific and appreciate the value of writing more than their peers
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

For most media outlets that reported on an important new survey measuring the impact of technology on teens' writing skills, the big news from the survey was that emoticons and text-messaging abbreviations are creeping into students' formal writing assignments. :-(

Buried beneath the alarm of writing "purists," however, was a promising finding with equally important implications for schools: Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project with support from the College Board and its National Commission on Writing, explores the links between the formal writing that teens do for school and the informal, electronic communication they exchange through eMail and text messaging.

Teens who communicate frequently with their friends, and those who own more technology tools such as computers or cell phones, do not write more often for school or for themselves than less communicative and less gadget-rich teens, according to the study, released April 24. Teen bloggers, however, write more frequently both online and offline, the study says.

Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs. Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life; 53 percent of non-bloggers say the same thing.

Bradley A. Hammer, who teaches in Duke University's writing program, says the kind of writing students do on blogs and other digital formats actually can be better than the writing style they learn in school, because it is better suited to true intellectual pursuit than is SAT-style writing.

"In real ways, blogging and other forms of virtual debate actually foster the very types of intellectual exchange, analysis, and argumentative writing that universities value," he wrote in an op-ed piece last August.

Teens write for a variety of reasons, the report notes: as part of a school assignment, to stay in touch with friends, to share their artistic creations with others, or simply to record their thoughts. Teens say they're more motivated to write when they can choose topics that are relevant to their lives and interests, and they report greater enjoyment of school writing when they have the chance to write creatively. Teens also report that writing for an audience motivates them to write well and more frequently--and blogs are one way of providing this type of audience.

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Chef Danny and His Helper Ion

This is from the fundraiser for the May 10th Peace and Global Citizenship dinner at The People's Farm:

Scott Webb: Robosexuals

Scott Webb
ENG 230: Introduction to Literature

Robosexuals



Human sexuality is a basic human drive virtual from cradle to grave. But what about when that sexuality doesn't contain a human, or even sex? What are the possibilities when one's partner is not human but is rather a script, a program, or a machine? Is what results a harmless curiosity, or a threat to what it means to be human? What do we have today, and where are going?

Already, the Internet allows us increased opportunity to replace physical human relations with "virtual" human relations. We replace face to face human conversation with 'IM' based "chats" and rush to sexual conquest with cybersex. Improved technologies such as voice and video conferencing put us in more personal contact with one another (as opposed to a purely text based IM), but they are still abstractions; layers of technology standing between us and our partner(s).

But with anonymity being inherent to the very nature of the medium, there's no promise that the person on the other end is a person at all. Through this anonymity, technology allows us to interact with scripted partners that are programmed to respond to what we say. A well-known old example of this would be the program ELIZA, first written in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum (“ELIZA”). Programmed to mimic a Rogerian psychoanalyst, one could carry on limited conversations with ELIZA. While quite frustrating for use in cybersex, a program properly scripted thus could do a lot more, and to a limited degree, have. Already in chat rooms there are ad 'bots' which enter, pretending to be a cute 19/f/ca with pics and a webcam and definitely interested in some sexy chat--so long as you go to her webpage and sign-up (small monthly fee required).

Other programs further these abstractions by giving us a virtual world in which to explore our curiosities. The most popular and comprehensive of these is Linden Resarch’s Second Life®. Here users, controlling digital avatars, can interact with other users doing the same. The opportunities for sexual exploration have not been lost on the residents. Groups relating to bestiality, robot love, BDSM and a number of other fetishes have already sprung up. In the real world, one cannot indulge in their interest with have sex with a hermaphrodite robot with demon wings and a canine penis--or even know they had such an interest. In Second Life®, it becomes a possibility to role play it--complete with visuals. A user is limited only by their imaginations, and the medium. Whatever is possibility within the rules of the abstraction is possible for them (“Second Life”).



What must not be forgotten is what happens is indeed role play, and nothing more. One person is pretending to be the herm robot, or whatever character suits them, and another is pretending to be the other. That doesn't always have to be the case, though. It would not be too large of a leap to have a program controlling the avatar on the other end. The use of doing such is questionable, but not beyond the realm of what is possible even now.



As artificial intelligence and robotic engineering become more and more sophisticated, we will see a growth in the sex industry in this area as well. The abstractions of technology between human and human will end the requirement for another person--and end being abstractions. What starts as scripted programs on one's computer can easily be applied to a programmed robot. For many years science fiction has focused on the idea of sex and relationships involving man and machine. Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence: A.I. had "Gigolo Joe," an android designed to look like a male built for the purposes of sex (Spielberg). Steve De Jarnatt's Cherry 2000 also covered this. In Cherry 2000, Sam Treadwell is a supervisor at a local scrap plant, and is happily coupled with Cherry, his robot "wife." However, in a case of kitchen nookie gone awry, her circuits are fried and Sam is left missing his "love." Although offered his pick of many of this other models Sam is, as the local robot mechanic puts it, a romantic, and must have his Cherry 2000 model. Sam is forced to go into the lawless zones of the desert to find a new model, where instead he meets E. Johnson, a spunky redhead human that catches his heart (Jarnatt).



In this story, relationships in the city are marked by going to various clubs, previewing a woman's "demo" tapes, and then haggling with her lawyer over how long their "relationship" will take place, and what the terms (and price) will be. One might consider it little surprise that Sam prefers his obedient and doting Cherry (interestingly enough, when we first meet E. Johnson, she is wearing a shirt which says "Dignity," as if to put into writing the difference between her and the status quo of modern human relationships and robots) (Jarnatt). While Sam found what he really wanted was a meaningful relationship, one with a human, there's no reason plenty of other men (and women) might be satisfied with a robot. And that is perhaps the real question. Can one love a machine? We can love pets easily enough, and many develop strong affinities for their automobiles. The idea might be scoffed at by some, but is not necessarily beyond reason. In cyberspace, people can develop strong feelings for people they've never met. Just there being a real human on the other end doesn't have to be a big issue, as the facts of that person's existence might not be what they seem, and one's emotions are directed at both that which they cannot see and, ultimately, a lie.

One example of this involves the events surrounding Dr. Sanford Lewis, a psychiatrist who posed as a disabled bisexual woman in online chat rooms. Soon things got out of hand and the truth was discovered. Although the people were genuinely helped by the advice of Dr. Lewis (posing as a woman), they were greatly affected emotionally by the deception. It wasn't the deception in the online sexual role play that angered so many, but the trespassing into the woman’s mental space. Abstractions lay between the parties involved with the cybersex; the thoughts and feelings shared were real (Gray 136).

If these experiences show us anything it is that people have a capacity to “love” and gain sexual pleasure by proxy, or through layers of abstraction. If we can get our kicks without a direct human component, can we get them from machines or, more specifically, robots?

Obviously the answer is yes, for some. Even if one did not have personal experience of such, the answer is in our language as we have words for this phenomenon. Agalmatophilia is an attraction to dolls, mannequins, statues and/or other related objects and can be applied, analogically to robots (“Agalmatophilia”). One need not even pry this deep for proof of our ability to sex it up with machines and enjoy it to; one look at the sex toy market be it dildos, vibrators or synthetic vaginas and blow-up dolls and they will have evidence enough.



What robotic, especially android, partners can offer are a mechanical, non-human humanoid body forms coupled with an artificial intelligence—a dildo that can hold you and talk to you about your day. ELIZA was programmed over 40 years ago and fooled some people who conversed with it into thinking it was a person (Franchi and Güzeldere par. 111). Imagine a system programmed today and uploaded into an android sex doll. Walla! Gigalo Joe and Cherry 2000 are at your service. Combine that with the recently developed technology that allows software to mimic any human voice and you have the chance to talk, and sex up, a deceased love one or a famous celebrity (or at least a robot with their voice). The crossover of emotions in such situations could be tremendous (Frank).

As android programming and physical engineering “progress,” so too will our confusion and inability to tell “them” apart from “us.” In A.I., David found himself (itself?) a captive at a local “Flesh Fest,” a gathering of neo-Luddites who destroyed androids because they resented their encroachment on humanity. In a scene closely resembling movie scenes set in the ancient Roman coliseum in which the crowd begs for mercy for a gladiator, David is spared this fate because his cries for help seemed too real. They thought he was a real boy (Spielberg).

Questions arise from this: What happens when a “couple” are married, yet one of them turns out to be an android? If someone “sleeps with” their own Gigalo Joe, are they cheating on their spouse? If it were a David model, would that be pedophilia, or a pet model bestiality? If one is able to, as unlikely though it may seem, conceive from or impregnate an android, what then? An incubator is a machine that acts as a womb for premature infants. What if that technology “improves” so drastically that the human womb need not be used altogether, similar to the hatching centers in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World?." If synthetic DNA and RNA can be developed to such a level as to create synthetic sperm or a synthetic egg so well that they might fertilize or be fertilized by their human component, what of the offspring?



Questions like this are tackled in the television series remake of Battlestar Galactica. In the series there are Cylons, which are robots created by humans to carry out specific tasks (like tools or appliances). Soon however, in a theme common to scifi stories involving robots, the Cylons gain an “awakening” and begin to have free will and enter into a war with the human race. The original, human designed Cylons have a very mechanical look, mechanical devices, but there are also Cylon designed units which appear human to such a degree that they’ve fooled humans. They have lived with them, made love with them, and are so accurate that they appear human even down to their very DNA. But they are programmed, and questions arise about what is free will and what is programming. Questions also arrive about sex with these human-like Cylon models as well as what is to become of the children when it is found that human and Cylon copulation and produce viable, hybrid offspring. (Eick and Moore).



Our science fiction authors and directors have been addressing these questions for many years, and there is a wealth of concocted situations to study over and reflect on. The questions we ask have special relevance because we are not merely dealing with imaginative science fiction, but more likely are preparing ourselves for what soon will be both amazing and terrifying science fact. As with many moral dilemmas, questions abound while answers remain elusive. So it is with our fictional characters, and so too it will be for us.



Works Cited

“Agalmatophilia.” Agalmatophilia - Definition of Agalmatophilia. 27 May 2007.

Artificial Intelligence: AI. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law. 2001. DVD. Dreamworks. 2001.

Battlestar Galactica. Prod. David Eick, Ronald D. Moore. Perf. Edward James Olmos,
Mary McDonnell, Jamie Bamber. British Sky Broadcasting. Burnaby, 2004.

Cherry 2000. Dir. Steve De Jarnatt. Perf. Melanie Griffith, David Andrews, Ben Johnson, Tim Thomerson. 1987. VHS. Orion Home Video, 1988.

“ELIZA.” FOLDOC: Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing. 9 September 1997

Frank, Robert H. “The Downside of Hearing Whoopi at the Mall.” New York Times. 7
August 2001. 29 April 2008.

Franchi, Stefano and Güzeldere, Güven. “Colorful Personalities.” Constructions of the Mind. Volume 4, Issue 2. 24 July 1995.

Gray, Chris. Cyborg Citizen. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Cutchogue: Buccaneer Books, 1946.

Second Life. 2008. Linden Research Inc. 29 April 2009 .

Andrew McIlwaine Bell: Welcome to Corporate U

Welcome to Corporate U
By Andrew McIlwaine Bell
Perpsectives on History

Calvin Coolidge was right. It seems that even inside the walls of our country's most prestigious colleges and universities, "the chief business of the American people is business." Academic departments at both two-year and four-year institutions are increasingly being managed like big-box retail chains. Their survival and growth depend on a steady influx of cheap, exploitable workers.

Consider Iowa State University, for example. According to research compiled by the American Association of University Professors, most of the classes offered at Iowa State in 2006 were taught by either part-time instructors (those who were paid by the class) or contingent faculty, a category that includes temporary full-time employees, grad students, and postdoctoral fellows.

Iowa State is hardly unique. For more than three decades, colleges and universities across the country have been increasingly relying on part-time and nontenure-track employees to shoulder the lion's share of teaching responsibilities. A recent study by the U.S. Department of Education shows a substantial increase in the number of part-time faculty at all institutions since 1975 (from 30.2 percent to 46.3 percent) coupled with a simultaneous drop in the number of full-time tenured professors (36.5 percent to 24.1 percent).

The numbers from history departments reveal a similar trend. A survey conducted by the AHA in 1981–82 found that part-time instructors at that time constituted barely 5 percent of the history faculty nationwide. Twenty years later, the number had jumped to nearly 30 percent. While this expansion of cheap labor translates into a better bottom line for administrators, many of the part-time instructors themselves are struggling to earn the respect and financial security enjoyed by their tenured peers.1

On many campuses, contingent faculty and adjuncts are treated like part-time retail workers. A survey conducted by the AHA in 2000 shed light on some of the problems they face: outdated equipment, job insecurity, lack of support for research trips and conferences, and limited prospects for career advancement. Of course, the same survey also indicated that not all of these workers are unhappy; some reported a high level of job satisfaction. But evidence from subsequent surveys suggests that most of these contented instructors were able to overlook the less pleasant aspects of part-time pedagogy because they derived the bulk of their income from sources outside the academy. School administrators seem either unable or unwilling to differentiate between adjuncts who depend on per-class stipends for survival and those who view their paychecks as icing on the cake.2

The result of this indifference, whether willful or not, has been the steady growth of a largely invisible underclass of struggling instructors whose concerns are rarely addressed by the academy. The AHA's survey of 380 temporary and part-time history professors revealed that fewer than a third have a way to file a formal complaint. Nearly 20 percent reported that they "didn't know" if their school had a grievance policy. But even when such policies are clearly spelled out, part-timers often feel afraid to say anything that might jeopardize their positions. As one adjunct put it, "any complaints, and you are never fired. You are simply never rehired." Teresa Knudsen believes she lost her adjunct job at Spokane Community College (SCC) for speaking out about the plight of part-time teachers. In February 2005, she published an op-ed piece in a Spokane newspaper that described Washington's community college network as a "state-run feudal system." Shortly afterwards, said Knudsen, she was called down to the dean's office and told that her comments had offended SCC's full-time faculty members. The following December, she was let go, though SCC administrators deny that Knudsen was fired because of her political views.

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Inside Higher Ed: Data on Minority Doctorates Suppressed

(Courtesy of PhDinHistory)

Data on Minority Doctorates Suppressed
Inside Higher Ed

If you are conducting a faculty search, or trying to diversify the professoriate, or want to see whether various programs to do so have succeeded, the Survey of Earned Doctorates has always been a key source of information. They survey will tell you, for example, how many Latinos earned doctorates in chemistry (23 for the last year available), or how many black people earned doctorates in political science (34). If you watch the trends from year to year, and also pay attention to the total number of doctorates awarded (1,170 in chemistry to U.S. citizens, and 506 in political science), you have an instant sense of the changing or stagnant demographics of your pool.

Or at least you used to.

Citing privacy concerns, the National Science Foundation — which sponsors the survey — has ordered that data on subgroups beneath a certain size be blocked from release. So subgroups for which the numbers are small will no longer be available. So while we know that in 2005, six black people earned doctorates in earth, atmospheric and marine sciences, the NSF won’t reveal how many earned the degrees in 2006 (covered by the most recent report). Information about the number of Latinos earning degrees in some engineering fields is gone, as are data about a number of categories for black Ph.D.’s. For Native Americans, where the base is smaller, the impact of the new policy is especially dramatic. The report was stripped of information on how many doctorates were awarded to all but 6 of the 35 subfields for which data were collected.

Because most people who focus on the study are drawn to the overall trends, where data about various minority groups is preserved because of the larger sample sizes, the issue of the missing information is only now starting to receive attention. But advocates for increased diversity in graduate education and the professoriate are frustrated by the changes. They note that educational experts of many political perspectives agree that it’s hard to know how to tackle educational challenges without information about the performance of subgroups — that’s even one of the principles underpinning President Bush’s favorite education law, No Child Left Behind. So removing this information, advocates say, makes no sense. They add that debates about public policy would be informed by seeing these numbers in detail — and that the fact that the numbers are small is part of why they are important to consider.

“This hides information. It removes information,” said Andreen Neukranz-Butler, human rights compliance officer for the University of Idaho and a member of the board of the American Association for Affirmative Action. If a subgroup goes from two to four doctorates a year (or falls similarly), that’s important information, she said, and those working on these issues need to know it.

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Bart Ehrman: Questioning Religion on Why We Suffer

Bart Ehrman, Questioning Religion on Why We Suffer
Host: Terry Gross



It's one of the oldest faith questions: If there's an all-powerful and loving God, why do human beings suffer?

In his latest book, religious studies professor Bart D. Ehrman wrestles with that question — and with the implications of the often-contradictory answers he finds. In God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer, Ehrman meditates upon how the Bible explains human suffering, why he finds the explanations unconvincing, and why he gave up on being a Christian.

Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus and more than a dozen other books, chairs the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

To Listen to the Episode

Life During Wartime; America's Chemically Modified 21st Century Soldiers

I remember reading Lucius Shepard's novella "R & R" in 1986 (later expanded into the 1987 novel Life During Wartime) and thinking how it was so far-fetched and fantastical. It was a hallucinatory tale of drug-modulated, technologically enhanced warriors of a dominant culture hunting down guerrilla resistance fighters in the jungles of Guatemala. More fantasy than fact? I guess not...



America's Chemically Modified 21st Century Soldiers
By Clayton Dach
Adbusters; Reposted at AlterNet

Armed with potent drugs and new technology, a dangerous breed of soldiers are being trained to fight America's future wars.

...

The Mediated Soldier

In the new model army, brute force and viscera are out. Cutting edge gadgetry, omniscient surveillance and precision long-distance termination is in. What motivates it all is the type of war we fear we'll be fighting.

On this, the strategists have spoken: with Iraq and Afghanistan as the testing grounds, the conflicts of the future will be guerrilla wars, open-ended, with no battle lines, no rules of engagement and ambivalent or openly hostile civilian populations in which any man, woman or child can turn combatant.

In breeding a future soldier for these future wars, we will inevitably leave behind the mere rectification of human weakness and enter into the realm of the superhuman. Glimpses of this realm have already become commonplace in the form of ceramic-Kevlar body armor and night-vision goggles -- wizardry that transforms squishy pink men into bullet-proof creatures of the night.

Such magic will continue apace under the auspices of dozens of military development initiatives across the globe, creating a species known variously as the Future Force Warrior by the U.S., FIST by the British Army, Félin by the French. All are merely the human components of broader visionary projects for what has been called "the army after next," the most noteworthy of which being the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems. With a budget clocking in at $160 billion or so, FCS is not just one of history's most costly weapons programs; it is an all-encompassing modernization program, one that will usher in a total re-imagining of the armed forces. What FCS and its kin have imagined for soldiers is a battlefield experience increasingly mediated by technology, insulated in a cocoon of "force multipliers" -- military parlance for anything that allows you to accomplish more with fewer personnel. In concrete terms, that translates into an array of tools designed to enhance lethality and survivability: next-generation sidearms; headsets that provide live command and control, detailed geographic data and the ability to fire around corners; smart suits equipped with ultralight nanotech armor, micro-climate conditioning, real-time health monitoring and even automated medical care like CPR and drug delivery. Also on the docket are robotic exoskeletons that allow the soldiers wearing them to carry hundreds of pounds -- even while running -- without breaking a sweat, as well as handheld imaging equipment that grants the ability to see targets through walls.

None of these are sci-fi pipe dreams. The DARPA-developed Radar Scope is already in limited deployment, detecting human breathing through a foot of concrete on two AA batteries. Utah-based robotics company Sarcos is expected to deliver its prototype exoskeletons to the Army this year, at roughly the same time that many of the other Future Force Warrior components begin field testing. Full-scale production of a number of the systems is scheduled for early in the next decade.

The Absent Soldier

It is tempting to say that military technology is steadily transforming war into a video game. Yet there's a strange irony in the works: as the games claw themselves even closer to the look and feel of real, down-and-dirty warfare, real warfare is fluttering away into strategic and technological abstraction, effectively taking a step back from its own reality.

For all the PlayStation sexiness of the ultra lethal, force-multiplied warrior, the true fate of the in-the-flesh soldier is to vanish into the abstraction.

The explicit purpose of Future Combat Systems is to progressively supplement, to the point of ultimately displacing, the human soldier with a whole array of automated, autonomous and remote technologies -- things like unmanned surveillance drones, long-range and non-line-of-sight precision-guided munitions, and unmanned air and ground combat vehicles. Though the latter group may never look anything like Schwarzenegger minus skin, make no mistake that what we are talking about here is weaponized robots.

An oft-quoted U.S. Joint Forces Command study from 2003 (rather candidly titled Unmanned Effects: Taking the Human Out of the Loop) predicted that autonomous, networked robots -- faster and more lethal than human combatants -- could become the norm by 2025. That may prove overly confident, but a congressional mandate has already called for one-third of all U.S. military land vehicles to be unmanned by 2015, increasing to two-thirds by 2025.

If the idea of autonomous, homicidal robots dashing into troubled Third-World slums sends a major chill down your spine, you're certainly not alone. Well aware of the nightmarish optics, defense contractors and military brass alike have been presenting a united front, noting that this is about moving soldiers out of harm's way, not about deleting humans from the "kill chain" entirely.

While there is little doubt that protecting soldiers is the central motivation, shifting troops into a distant pixel-pushing role also performs a secondary purpose: it neatly removes obstacles for those looking to wage war overseas while expending as little of their domestic political capital as possible. You can call it a by-product, or you can call it an ulterior motive, depending upon how dismal your outlook is.

Whatever the reasons, as we lose ourselves in the lovely fantasy of sidestepping the maimed veterans and crying widows, we could be walking right into an even nastier pile of shit. During the bombing campaign that accompanied the 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq, satellite-guided munitions caused scores of accidental civilian deaths. If these people had perished at the barrel of coalition rifles, their deaths would have been called massacres; as it stands, they are mere technical glitches and failures of intelligence.

The moral here is straightforward: once the human presence in the kill chain is diluted, so too is accountability. The future's soldier could be one surrounded by an inveigling haze of pharmaceuticals, decision-making robots, errant bombs and faulty surveillance data; the only thing to emerge from this haze will be an exhilarating sense of our own guiltlessness. Alas, the populations against which we use our fancy toys are unlikely to share in the feeling.

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EcoEKY: Green News from Eastern Kentucky

(Courtesy of Beth Connors-Manke)

Dear Kentuckians--

Recently I've started a blog called EcoEKY: Green News from Eastern Kentucky I'm writing to introduce you to the blog and to ask your help with it.

The purpose of the blog is to share and promote information about sustainable activities in eastern Kentucky. The focus of the site is not to be "anti" coal or "anti" anything else, but to be "pro" ecological responsibility and "pro" sustainability. I hope the site will grow in information and expand in function, and will eventually become "the" place eastern Kentuckians go to when they want to know what's green in our part of the state. Right now, it's functioning mostly as a clearinghouse for eastern Kentucky news articles on anything green. The bulk of the information so far has been about PRIDE clean-ups and recycling, but I'd love to add more information on renewable energy, organic gardening, local food, sustainable forestry, environmental education, etc.

So, that's why I'm writing you. First, to ask you to check it out. But also, to ask your help with it. There're a few ways you can do that:

1) by sending me any up-to-date news item, or blog post, or link you see relating to anything sustainable in eastern Kentucky. (So far I'm thinking of "eastern Kentucky" as the Appalachian area south of I-64 and east of I-75.)

2) you could write short articles or announcements about anything sustainable you know is going on in the area and I could post them for you--giving you credit, of course.

or 3) you could become an active participant in the blog. I would love a few people to take me up on this. I would add you as a blog member, and you would be able to post news articles, announcements, and blogs yourself. This would really help to add depth to the site and make it more of a community effort.

There's also one other way you could help: I'm looking for the "perfect" eastern Kentucky green image to go at the top of the page. If you come across such an image (very "green," very Kentucky, but not so detailed as to obscure the text) let me know.

The "links" page is also non-functional right now, but I hope to have that up and going soon. In the meantime, feel free to send me what you think are essential links to list.

I thank you for your time.

Best regards--

Sara

PS--feel free to forward this message on to anyone you think might be interested in checking out or helping with the project. Thanks.

Instructables: Guiding Us One Step at a Time

Literati first introduced me to this site. She can build anything and whenever I think about something she sends me an instructable on how to do it (always appreciated).

Marchman and I are going to an outdoor dinner/fundraiser/party at Danny's country place and we wanted something to play with and we thought this might be a fun project:

Water Balloon Catapult