Asu, que tal chanchote?!

Kind of a schaudenfraude video, but I can't get enough of this video of catcallers getting called out after catcalling their own moms, especially the mom who says that "she doesn't care about [his] boss"

My Name's Ibra, Holmes

And I'm from PSG-10.

Reppin' the 805 million people in the world, ese.

Whatchu doin' for the world, bro?

Chicagoans Talk about Gun Violence

Given my past post about a group of Chicagoans attempting to intervene in the city's violence and Derrick Rose, posting this mini-documentary by Bulls Center Joakim Noah was only appropo

Chiding People to be Decent

Read this article about the pay of adjunct professors in comparison to tenured and tenure-track professors.

Not that positive.

I read the comments.

Less positivity.  Some lamented how academia was becoming a playground only for the socially elite. Some decried market logic.

What bothers me is that the brainless construct called market, as if it was the Oracle of Delphi, is simply and without any criticism accepted to be the rightful force that drives ultimately all value judgements and decisions in all areas including what counts as valuable profession and what contributes to society's progress. 

I'll be honest: In my personal value system, anthropology, human sciences, ecological sciences rank quite high, right there with earth science and physics (my own training), but also including non-neocon macro-economics, while I see little use in all those many law schools and business schools. Sorry, Jenifer.  

What is new information? The neocons tell us that the market should decide in which direction all economic activity, including learning, research, and teaching should be directed. The market (model) is a big stochastic machine that operates as the "invisible hand" which assigns value by trial and error, and controls the flow of economic activity by allocating money here and pulling it out there. The word free market is misleading because it is constraint to not go against the interests of few owners and members of the so-called meritocracy. But especially with regards to academic research, learning and discovery of new knowledge, most people are lead to accept the idea that freedom means to give the market all control about the direction we are supposed to be searching for new information and improvements in all aspects of living. It means that we put the control to a blind, barely understood "thing out there" which can give rise to all kinds of value judgments about professions. So for example, anthropology may be considered more or less a worthless market glut, while what law schools and business schools produce is seen as The information to tap the sources of wealth production. (Easy - it serves those in control). The problem is, this system is by principle bound to have tunnel vision. If all the sensors of a complex system (which includes our minds) are biased and focused only towards preselected potential sources of new information, and accept from those only what it expects according to its own biases, then what it gains as new information is very likely to be actually just old information, which is no information at all. That system begins to optimize its efficiency to the death. As they like to say: "The market has already accounted for it" (what it perceives that is). In other words, it is by design that we are just drifting and may not even know when we go over the cliff - While a few anthropologists may be trying very hard to prevent this from happening.

Some were chiding the article writer for her career choice as an Anthropologist.

A commenter named Bulldog710 had this to say about the freshly made Ph.D Anthropologist article writer:

Bottom line: (for example) There are 10,000 PhDs with degrees in Anthropology. There are only 1,000 professorships in the U.S. available, and all those positions are filled with tenured PhDs.

Poor Sarah feels defrauded because, as the 10,000 + 1 with a doctorate in Anthropology, she didn't get offered the Red Carpet at Harvard like she feels she deserves. So now, in her world view, the entire educational system in America is headed for the sewer.
I suggest Sarah grow up first, then after a few years of maturity, try again. Such incredible pity pot.

There were a lot more comments that this particular poster made, but this one was one of the most vitriolic because of the attack he/she laid upon a person he/she only apparently knows through means of this article.  The comment just inflated the article writer with characteristics such as entitlement and immaturity.

The arrogance was answered.

Bottom line: Despite the fact that more and more students are going to college and therefore there is more demand for classes and resources, the fact that university bureaucracies are growing exponentially with the upper ranks getting larger and larger salaries, and the fact that the expectations for research output has not changed, it apparently somehow totally makes sense that the number of tenured professor positions in the USA have been steadily decreasing while cheap adjunct positions have become more common. 

Yes, let the system arbitrarily take away gainful employment opportunities proportionate to the years of unpaid work and student loan debt you've gone through to get the job you've always wanted and were willing to work for, in favor of shackling you into "permanently temporary" adjunct positions without any job security or benefits simply because they can get away with extracting the work out of you without the oh so terribly inconvenient price tag of paying you an appropriate living wage. 

We are supposed to live in a world where a small handful of extremely greedy people hoard money hand over fist, while the rest of us should grovel and beg and just be grateful when one of these people occasionally tosses one of us a bone.  Don't dare step out of line and point out that things could work better another way, or that there are better ways to distribute wages.

Bless you, Bulldog710, for unleashing a completely vicious and unfounded character assassination toward someone you've never met simply because she is pointing out very real and completely arbitrary inequities in a system that are really devastating some peoples lives unnecessarily.  Putting effort into fixing things and making things work better (or like they're supposed to) is for bratty little children; instead, lets be mature adults and mindlessly defend a broken system by conveniently finding a way to place blame on people arbitrarily screwed over because that's the path of least resistance and most morally simplistic.  Roll over and just accept your fate because that's what's convenient for the worldview of the Bulldog710's of the world, who are far too preoccupied with their reprehensibly lazy and unfounded misanthropy to be bothered to extend any effort beyond that of a banana slug.

Students Confronting Intolerance

Subway Dance Party

Since I've been Metro rider, and I've listened to Joe Metro from Blue Scholars over and over, and have posted on public space in Los Angeles...

Dare to Fight!?

The public space.

Finding a Creative Use for Water Bottles

Go Kababayan!

Look at Yourself After Watching This

Says the video description on Youtube.



Phrases that come to mind: thankful, and making the best out of what we have and are given.

Patch Adams: Being a Prick to Get Things Done

One dialogue I've always remembered and has shaped my attitude towards graduate school: you don't need to be a prick to get things done.

Best embodied and lesson made most memorable by the movie Patch Adams, based on the real-life medical school experiences of a doctor by that name.

In one scene there's a heated exchange between the easygoing, heavy-joking, radical-thinking Patch Adams and his uptight, born-to-be-a-doctor roommate, Mitch.

Patch: Why don't you like me? You're a prick, and I like you.

Mitch: Because you make my effort a joke. I want to be a doctor. This isn't a game to me! This isn't play time! This is serious business! I have it in me to be a great doctor!

In order to do that I have to sacrifice if I want to be better.

Patch: Better than me, hmm?

Mitch: I will save lives that could otherwise not have been saved. Now I could be like you and go around laughing and have a good time haha, but I prefer to learn. Because the more I learn the more likely I will have the answer at a crucial moment and save a life.

You say I'm a prick? You say I'm a prick? You know maybe I am. But you ask the average person when death comes knocking at their door whether they want a prick on their side or some kindergarten teacher who's gonna kiss their ass.

Because when that day comes, I want the prick! And so will you.

Patch: You know I forget how young you are Mitch, that you think you need to be a prick to get things done. You actually think that that's a new idea.

The scene in question begins at 45:22 in the video below.

Stephen Colbert's Northwestern Commencement Speech

Key Quotes:

• Thankfully, dreams can change. If we all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses.
• If you do get your dream, you are not a winner.
• Now there are few rules in improv...You are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if everybody else is more important than you are, you will naturally pay attention to them, and serve them...No one is leading, you're all following the follower, serving the servant, you cannot win improv.  And life is an improvisation.  You have no idea what's going to happen next and you are mostly just yanking ideas out of your ass as you go along.
• And like improv you cannot win your life...
• In my experience, you will truly serve only what you love, because service is love made visible.  If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community.  If you love money, you will serve your money.  And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself...and only have yourself.  So no winning.  Instead try to love others and serve others, and find those who will love and serve you. 

The Interrupters

Below is a movie about gang and violence interventionists working in the city of Chicago for a program called Ceasefire.

The program's philosophy is that "violence is like a disease", which means that the people suffering from it "need to be treated."

I have watched a shed load of movie trailers. A shed load. And always with a cynical eye. But this is the first time I have ever applauded a trailer. (A trailer!) - perspicaciouscritic

I had the chance to watch it in its limiting showing.

I'm not a big movie watcher, but for me the two hours rolled and rumbled. Maybe it was a combination of a good documentary-making and the message that needed to be sent to audiences.

The program Ceasefire has their critics. Some would maintain that they're promoting gang membership. Or they'll be accused by community members of snitching to law enforcement.

From what I know, they've shown to be effective to the point where prisoners have heard about the program from inside their jail cells. Statistically, they've managed to slow down the killings and ease the tensions between folks.

For me the documentary showed that a lot of violence is fueled by a thirst for revenge, a fire that once raging isn't easily controlled no matter the situation. The revenge could be fueled by anything, for territories or for a person simply bumping into another person. The anger expressed over the "petty" situation is likely the result of a build-up of unexpressed anger over their various situations.

Through their networks and being "in the know", the Ceasefire workers, the Interrupters, found ways to step into those hostile and volatile situations. They relied on their street cred, and their own experiences with violence; they were just out there talking, chilling, mediating, preventing such drastic action.

The Story of William Kamkwamba

William Kamkwamba is a boy who had nothing but a bunch of spare parts, an old library book on electricity, and proceeded to bring electricity to his village via windwills.

I first came across the story of William Kamkwamba when I heard about this event showcasing these activist-type short documentaries called World Pangea Day. I posted my favorite shorts on my original blog.



Yeah, yeah, you probably heard him talk on TED, and now it's just so cool, trendy, and sophisticated to know who William Kamkwamba is.



Today, he's 22, and a student at Dartmouth here in the United States.  He continues projects to bring electricity to villages in Malawi.

He updates his blog regularly at:  http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/