InvisibleIsland

This video experiment is based on a short piece of mine, "on an island otherwise invisible,” which appeared in Chapter Seven of The Anemone Sidecar. You may see the original here: http://ravennapress.com/anemonesidecar/chapters.html

I don't know why, but the video seems a little cropped to one side here on blogspot. To see it in full, you might want to go to full screen mode, or hop over to my Youtube account at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W80011fHKc

my various short fiction publications

I realized I ought to post links to some of short fiction publications.

here's one:

Ghost. Dog. Virgin.

http://751contents2.wordpress.com/issue-2/tucker/

I get nominated for an award...that I can't get

Interesting development.

As you know, I teach at Northeastern. Well, the other day, one of my students past or present (I don’t know which one), nominated me for the school’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

(Cheer!)

Except, it turns out that the award is only open to full time employees. I, like most of the people who now teach at Universities, am a part timer, or, as they say, “a member of adjunct staff.”

(Argh!)

So, if you’re reading this, and you’re the student who nominated me, thank you humongously.

If, however, you’re reading this, and you’re the official who aced me outta the running for being a part time employee…well, gee, golly..

Would you mind terribly if I admitted to hoping you get rectal Gonorrhea? In your left nostril?

Just saying…

Tiger Mothers...

I’ve not said anything yet about this new book on “tiger mothers.” I don’t plan to do so now, either.

Except for one little observation.

You know…and I know… everyone knows…

If the same book had been written not by a rich, successful, female Asian-American Yale Law professor but rather by a working class white woman in a trailer park…

She’d be in jail for child abuse before you could hum three verses of "Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer."

Happy Birthday to me

It was my birthday on Thursday. I’m now officially 54 years old.

And I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.

People Power in the Middle East...and the world

So, like everyone else in the known universe, I’ve been watching with real fascination while the peoples of the Middle East suddenly began turning out their dictators. First, it was Tunisia, then Egypt, and now half the nations of the Arab world (plus Iran!) are in the midst of People Power-style rebellions. Some will succeed, others will doubtlessly fail, but that the rebellions are happening at all is amazing.

Also, like everyone else, I’ve wondered what it all means. I’ve come up with a few random thoughts, which (out of the goodness of my heart) I’ll share with you…

1) People Power rocks. We’ve seen it, now, in the Philippines in '86, Eastern Europe '89, and Russia after that....now the Arab world. (Of course, Russia is now fairly authoritarian, but it is still a far cry from Stalin's USSR.)

So, could this be the beginning of an age of People Power? An age when states the world over will be shaped, re-shaped, and then re-re-shaped by exactly such manifestations of the popular will? If so, is it a new form of democracy? One in which the population really does "vote with its feet"?

So far, these have been genuine revolutions. Most revolutions aren't. Most of the time they are disguised coups in which one segment of the elite seizes power from another segment of the elite (even Lenin's revolution was just exactly that. A group of middle class and upper class intellectuals moved into a power vacuum).

But not so here. In Tunisia, in Egypt, and now in Libya, this really is the people in the streets. That suggests we are entering an age when ordinary folk the world over will increasingly be the significant political actors, at least in moments of crisis. Yes, the elites and their administrators will always run things, but they will have to do so with at least one eye on the public. In other words, a lot of places will be less like Greece under the colonels, and more like France after '68.

2) Our own elites need to be paying attention. That's not because I expect a People Power revolution here (although, if we don't get our jobless rate down below 10%, and soon, there may be one). But, even so, the Middle Eastern revolutions are important because they are going to reshape the way our "allies" and dependents will behave. We, or, rather our elites will have to learn to treat them with respect rather than as banana republics.

3) Also, sort of on the same note, there are potentially three big losers here. The first two are obvious, the US and Israel. The US will never have quite the same sort of leverage in the Middle East again. Israel is losing important (if usually covert) connections. But, in the long run, I don't think it will hurt the average American much. It might even improve relations with the Arab world once we're no longer backing tyrants. (Israel...I'm not so sure about.)

The third big loser might be unexpected: Iran. I am convinced that this is going to wound the dominant parties there rather badly.

Egypt's was a secular revolution, just as was the one in Tunisia. Which means that it is no longer just the Islamists who are fighting the system. In fact, the Islamists have failed time and time again to topple even one Arab government. Now, the secularists have brought down the biggest of all.

This is not to say that the Islamists couldn't seize power in Egypt. However, they have lost forever the image of being the only effective popular force in the Arab world.

5) When I say that the US could suffer because of the Revolution, I mean it. This might spell the end of the age of cheap (or, at least, less expensive) oil.

On the other hand, that might also mean that we finally have to sit down and come up with alternatives to the oil-economy. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

6) And finally…

Another reason our elites should be watching closely: the rich and powerful have acted in recent years as though they didn’t need to bother their pretty little heads about old fashioned things like nations. They were the new Global people who went wherever profits were highest and the hotels were most luxurious. If America got difficult, no problem, they'd just head for somewhere else -- which is why expats pack the beaches of Dubai, and companies like Halliburton fill its office towers.

But, guess what? Dubai is now shaking in its Guccis. Increasingly, there is no high ground, no favored place where the rich and powerful can go when things get hot elsewhere. Trouble will follow them. They can neither run nor hide.

If we're lucky, they'll be bright enough to see that.

Civil War

And another of the video lectures I'm giving my US History class.

thoughts on motion comics

Something else on my mind. I've recently run across the concept of the "motion comic." This is a new thing. It is like a comic, but electronic. It includes graphics, but also some "limited" animation, plus voice and music.

The big names, as you would expect, in motion comics are the major comic book companies -- Marvel for example. Though, I suppose that could change. New players always coming into the world.

What confuses me, though, is that motion comics are being sold as a completely new medium -- not cartoons, not graphic novels, but something alien and new,

Yet, when I look at them (and there are a bunch on the web), I'm struck by the fact that their "limited" animation looks pretty unlimited to me. Yes, they don't move all the time, but they boast at least as much animation as a lot of the TV cartoons I watched in my long lost boyhood. They have at least as much some of the Hanna-Barbera productions (take a look at Space Ghost) and a 'ell of a lot more than, say, "Space Angel."

If you haven't seen Space Angel, by the way, it is worth a glance, if only for the sheer weirdness of it (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Angelf). The Angel is sort of an interstellar policeman and secret agent who's always rushing about saving the universe.

A product of Cambria Productions, the show was a mix of cartooning and live action. So, for example, rather than drawing a moving mouth when a character spoke, the animators filmed an actor's lips and then pasted those on the face of the cartoon.

It was truly bizarre, and in retrospect, one of the creepier things I've ever watched on TV. Yet, I'm embarrassed to say I was a big fan at the time. Of course, I was four years old, but, still…

Anyway, my point is that I wonder if motion comics are really a separate art form, or merely the first step toward animation. Meaning that, eventually, the graphic novel and the comic, per se, will ultimately merge completely with full motion cartoons.


motion comics at Marvel

Space Angel on Youtube

"The Gathering Storm"

The Mexican-American War

lectures for classes

Hello, Everyone,

Haven't posted much recently. Usual reason. Life is ...complicated. We run and run and run and, like Alice's Queen, just stay in the same spot.

But, if you're interested at all, I'm still posting my class lectures to youtube. I'll try to post a couple of them.

cheers
mjt

Karl Marx (oh, hell)

On China

Another Note To the Rich and Powerful

Note to the Rich and Powerful

Two questions for the Rich and the Powerful. Plus a comment.

The comment: in case you’ve missed it, there’s a new genre out there…in film, and TV, and books. I call it “Tales of Off-Shoring Blues.”

These are stories of ordinary, average Americans who find themselves without jobs, without hope, and without dignity when suddenly some CEO or corporate executive decides that it will increase his or her bonus by a few cents more if they move the factory or the office to India, or China, or Mexico.

Right now, for instance, there’s a new movie in the theaters. It’s called “Company Men.” It’s all about a bunch of guys who get downsized, and then we watch as they wither, as their self-esteem collapses, their sense of themselves of as men declines, and they struggle to find a place in a new and alien world which holds them in contempt.

It’s supposed to be quite good. The critics all love it. I’m told the men in the story do come to terms with their plights. Or at least some of them do. Sort of. But I don’t think I’ll be able to go see it. It would cut a little close to the bone for me. I’m employed (if somewhat underemployed) at the moment, but I’ve been there. And I know a lot of other people who are there still.

What interests me about this new genre, though, is that it succeeds because it taps into something deep and powerful in the culture. It resonates with people because they know it is saying something true.

Specifically, they know that they are being hurt. They know that they are being stripped of their dignity. They know that their increased rates of suicide and heart attack are not accidental. They know that, in some place, even in middle class suburbs, children are starting to go hungry.

Or, to put it another way, they know they are being murdered. Not with guns and knives. Not quickly. But murdered all the same. Slowly. With a thousand, thousand humiliations and deprivations.

So, now my two questions to the Rich and Powerful.

First, if you continue your present course of action…if you keep downsizing and off-shoring and not making any effort to create jobs for Americans…if you keep letting them die…

What do you think will happen when Americans then quite rationally decide that it is either you or them? That they cannot survive if you continue to rule?

And, second, if that should occur…

How long do you think you can run? How well do you think you can hide?

Just asking.

Giffords2.mov

This Xcargo is a video.

Material from Politico.com, The Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other news sources may be found on the websites of the respective publishers. It is used here solely for illustrative purposes and is reproduced under the doctrine of fair use.

Once more, violence

And while we're on the subject...another New York Times article. This one headlined, "Rep. Giffords Critical After Ariz. Attack."

By this time, you know all the details so I won't go into them. But, what interests me most about this story is that Giffords had been subject to considerable abuse from the Right. If people in the Tea Party and people in GOP didn't exactly call for her to die, they didn't exactly go out of their way to suggest otherwise. They branded her a traitor, and a villain, and a conspirator, and more...

And, as one would expect, eventually, a lunatic took them seriously. And used a gun.

Now, of course, the GOP and others will say, Oh, My, How Terrible. And Extend their Deepest Sympathies. And maybe suggest that the shooter was, in fact, driven mad by growing up in a liberal America.

But, in the end, in the end...

You cannot call for violence, and then act shocked and surprised when it happens.



Rep. Giffords Critical After Ariz. Attack.

And we decline still further...

Fascinating article at New York Times which asks the question "Corporate Profits Are Booming? Why aren't jobs?"

Answer: because it is not in the short term interest of certain members of our national elite to let them bloom.

But the kicker is "short term." In the long...well, that's another story entirely.

The line in this article which says it best, I think, comes near the end. It reads, "Some economists, conservative and liberal, divine forbidding portents in all of this. If profits and employment no longer rise and fall together, they worry, then an already strained social compact will grow yet more frayed."

Who can doubt that they will be frayed, indeed?

Link to story is below:

Profits Are Booming. Why Aren't Jobs?

Schools, and automated CEOs

Everyone says our schools are broken.

And everyone seems to have a fix to flog—more money or less, crush teachers unions, merit pay, charter schools, and on, and on, and on. A hundred different solutions battle it out. Some, like the libertarian proposals to abolish the Department of Ed, will probably always remain in the realm of fantasy. Others actually have money behind them. Thus, the Republicans had their "No Child Left Behind." The Democrats have their "Race to the Top."

In theory, all these are very different. However, at least as I read the various proposals, they actually have a lot in common. They hold as an unstated but dominant belief that schools should prepare children to be white-collar employees of some large business entity.

But is that wise?

Let's think about how hiring has changed over time. In the 1950s, the norm was the massive industrial corporation with large numbers of workers on an assembly line and a smaller but still respectable number of white-collar employees in "the office."

Except that's not the way it stayed. All businesses seek to reduce their operating costs. One way to do that is to cut staff. So, in the second half of the twentieth century and the first years of this, American corporations did just that. They automated. Or, they went offshore. And we had a wave of blue-collar layoffs.

But, we reassured ourselves, there'd always be white-collar jobs. Surely, corporations would always hire managers, clerical workers, and accountants.

Except they didn't. Starting in the 1970s, corporate America famously flattened and mid-level staffers became an endangered species. Today we've got far fewer white-collar employees, and those who remain are working much harder.

And now… it's Upper Management's turn.

I predict we'll see the same process there. Some of the functions of top management are going to go offshore, or, believe it or not, be automated. If you don't think that's possible, then consider the following: the majority of trades on Wall Street today are carried out not by brokers, but by computers. It's called "Algorithmic Trading."

I'm not saying that we'll have a business version of the Terminator taking over the world. Corporations will always be run by human beings. But, it is also true that the natural evolution of corporations is away from employees. It is always in their interest to hire as few people as possible.

If so, then teaching our children to be cubicle denizens is idiotic. It is more likely that they will find jobs in small businesses and/or be self-employed. Which means we need to be training young people to be small-scale entrepreneurs. They don't need MBAs. They need basic business skills, like bookkeeping and salesmanship.

And we ought to re-value the trades. Let's face it, right now, it is lot easier for young people to make money repairing cars or fixing plumbing than it is for them to get entry-level positions in big companies.

Finally, maybe most of all, we ought to promote creativity in students—a proven business advantage, and something that will be difficult or impossible to automate or outsource any time soon.

And to make this happen, our schools are going to have to change—root and branch.

But we're going to have to change with them. We've got some major values to shift. We've got to do some re-defining of the word "success." We're going to have to get used to the idea that being a solvent plumber is better than being a bankrupt white-collar worker.

Until we do that, education in America will continue to be a problem. All the reforms proposed by Right, Left, and Center will fall short.

And our Race to the Top? All too likely a mad dash, confused and stumbling, without a goal, without a map…

Into the abyss.


*

Special Note: I'm off to New Mexico in a couple of days. So, I won't be posting an Xcargo next week or the week after. But, in the meanwhile, have a great holiday, and I'll see you in January 2011.

Twenty-eleven? Oy. How did that happen? Wasn't it just yesterday that 1975 was impossibly far away in the future?

Ah well…

Onward and upward.

Thoughts on Wikileaks and Evil Empires

So I see that Wikileaks is now under attack from many different vectors. PayPal (among others) is now refusing to work with the group. Meanwhile, its founder, Julian Assange, has arrested for rape.

Not good news for Wikileaks. But, come, let us confess, if that's the worse that happens to the organization and its members, then they will be almost impossibly lucky. The simple fact of the matter is that they have seriously angered governments the world over. Not just the US, but everyone from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe is gunning for them.

If anything, this is a lesson in the realities of great power politics. If Wikileaks had confined itself to embarrassing the United States, and a few other liberal democracies, the group would have been relatively safe. Oh, there is a certain danger in tweeking the nose of Uncle Sam, but you can usually get away with it. Americans (ditto Brits, Scandinavians, Germans, the Swiss, and so on) hate it when you say bad things about them, but they'll tolerate it because of their own traditions of fair play and free speech.

Besides, they are subject to much scrutiny from the world. If they should do anything… shall we say?... untoward, then the globe fairly quickly spots the "made in USA" label on the side of the box. Thus, even if they wanted to take serious action against you, they may think twice just because of the PR angle. (The Bay of Pigs was bad enough the first time around.)

This is not true, however, for most of the rest of the world. Many is the government for whom toleration is a quaint concept, and who can operate much further out of the limelight. And Wikileaks.well, Wikileaks has published American diplomatic cables which contain material dangerous to dozens of different states.

The moral of the story, of course, is that if you are going to take on an Evil Empire, pick one that's well-behaved. The Sheep you can stuff in a wolf's skin, and proclaim a public enemy, is so much easier to deal with than the real thing.