Author Archives: zephoria

vulnerable youth

I’m at a meeting with the Kellogg Foundation talking about vulnerable youth. They are interested in how technology can help at-risk kids take an alternate path. A few things keep coming up for me.

Situated learning. Folks have passions and if you can situate the learning they are doing in the scope of those passions, would learning be more effective? Fan fiction communities seem to be learning how to write and edit. What about teaching physics on the field to football students? What can be done with consumer media? What are the different ways to engage with passions?

Follow the drugs. Crystal meth use goes up amongst youth between 125% and 200% every youth. Educators and governments keep talking about the addictions and are screaming for it to stop, but they aren’t looking into why people are using it in HS. They think it’s only about peer pressure. When i was talking to kids doing meth, i kept hearing about how it gave them motivation, a relief to boredom, the feeling that they were doing something in this world (even if it was only scrubbing a tile floor with a toothbrush). Boredom is literally killing the youth.

What’s the point? Many kids i knew growing up had no motivation to live; where the hell were we going? Health, the future… these are all products of an optimistic life view. When you’re working a job till midnight, dealing with parents who are abusive, dealing with gang culture, what the hell does school have to offer that’s at all helpful? More than anything, it’s a place to just release all of that tension, anger and get attention for it. I mean, if you release that on the streets, you’ll get the shit beat out of you. At school, teachers give you attention.

In other words, how can education get out of philosophy and work in spite of all of what’s going on? Better yet, how can education be situated in the chaos that’s going on rather than thinking it’ll go away?

internship, health and sanity

So, i officially took an internship for the summer yesterday. I will be working for Blogger (Google). I’m still figuring out what i will be doing, but it’s a great way to build on the new blogging ethnography that i’ve been doing. And i’m *SUPER* psyched.

Over the last two months, i did a lot of thinking about my life, reflecting on the last semester. I was running on speed mode and i paid a price for it. By the time i hit Tokyo, i was having blackouts every day from the lack of muscles in my back causing my fractured neck to spasm and crush those little discs. I was taking more Aleve than vitamins. Not good. My body was a wreck.

I looked around at the people who were also on the speed-track with me. They too were a physical wreck. It was a scary scary thing to realize that i was going to kill myself if i kept this up. Furthermore, i realized that i wasn’t being nearly as productive as i used to be because i was always exhausted and caffeine/sugar-cracked-out in order to keep going. I had no focus, no sanity, etc.

When i thought about what i needed to do, i realized that the most important thing to do would be to focus on one thing, do it well, but calm the fuck down and focus on getting healthy again. I decided that i needed to stay home in San Francisco for the summer. Nothing was more appealing than a 9-5 (a.k.a. 10-8) schedule.

When Google approached me, i felt as though somewhere in the universe, someone was prepared to help me get my shit together. A research project directly in line with what i love with a team full of the coolest, kindest folks at a company with massage therapists, a fully-functional physical therapy-style gym, physical therapists, pilates, organic food, etc. and a pay that will let me survive grad school. My biggest concern was having to drive, but Google even solved that, offering a shuttle from Glen Park.

I am so beyond thankful.

did United sell their mailing list?

I’m pretty used to spam, but i also track it pretty vigilantly. I have a unique email address given to each company on the web and most of them i never send anything from. Some have ended up on spam lists for different reasons. Cheap Tickets sold my address within a month. Some get distributed because of invitation policies. I stoppped reading email to my LinkedIn address because someone with a virus problem managed to send that into spamming hell.

But today, a new entry into my spamming world emerged. United.

Email addresses that are used by companies that will then send my address to others (i.e. YASNS) are human readable. They have the company name in them so that the recipient will get a clue and realize that this is a site-specific address. Not all do. But the ones given to companies like United (receipt-only) have coded numbers in them to track them over time and place. My coded United email started getting spam today. As a Unix email reader, i have never experienced a virus. I can’t conceptualize any other way in which that email address was acquired by anyone. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. I guess they really are going bankrupt.

how will the military vote?

Although i uninstalled Shrook, Newsweek kept coming during finals. Thus, i read all about the prison crises. While the soldiers were saying that they followed orders, those in charge were passing the blame or saying that it was just a few people operating inappropriately. Stanley Milgram, anyone?

Waking up, my roommate reminded me that it was Memorial Day and we got to talking about different wars. I started thinking about how the military always follows orders and is always a pillar of conservative ideas. They’re the most likely population to vote Republican. I wonder how much they feel betrayed right now. I mean, their Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of Defense betrayed their trust and then refused to take responsibility for what happened. Even McNamara knew that those at the top were always responsible.

Newsweek had all of these write-ups about military folks who were embarassed by the prison scandel. Do you think that they’ll vote for Bush in Round II? Where do their allegiences lie?

blogging and assumptions about class

We’ve all heard the rhetoric about how blogging is an equal-access opportunity for publication because many services are free. Yet, embedded in the creation of those services are a lot of assumptions about money and time and how people spend these precious items. Nothing made me more pleased after re-installing Shrook than seeing Quinn calling folks out on these assumptions, particularly as services begin to charge and the pundits start heckling people for bitching about the cost.

Just think… $60 will pay for a full year of education for a student via the Goma Student Fund. Money is *very* relative.

waving to Dana H. Boyd

Please digitally wave to Dana H. Boyd, a molecular geneticist and Harvard prof who does fun work on membrane protein structures. He’s really cool and i think it’s a riot that we have similar names and that Google is working to turn us into one.

Of course, there’s a reason that Google thinks we’re one… folks keep referencing me using his name. My first name really does have an ‘h’ at the end of it (not a middle initial). Removing that ‘h’ means that you’re referencing him, not me. Also, the reason that ‘h’ is there is because it balances the ‘d’ – there really are no capital letters in my name. Really. Yet, while the capitalization bugs me, the loss of an ‘h’ just feels disrespectful, as though it’s calling someone else into being other than me. At least it’s good to know that person and to know that he’s a good one. ::wave::

Lakoff and the language of politics

I forgot to blog about this amazing talk i went to last week. I’ve been desperately wanting to take a class with George Lakoff after reading only a part of Women Fire and Dangerous Things. Sadly, that has yet to happen. But when i found out he was talking in Berkeley about the language of (Republican) politics, i rushed through grading to make it to his talk. OMG. I am *so* glad i went. It has to be the most memorable and amazing talk i’ve been to in ages.

He opened by being adorable, noting that he’s a professor and teaches seminars – 15 people sitting around a table discussing not huge scary lecture halls, let alone churches full of an attentive paying audience. He notes that if this many people showed up to hear a linguistics professor talk, he has more confidence in November 2 than he thought.

He next talks about how the Republicans spend some billion dollars on think tanks each year – 43 think tanks, one created about each year, all started in 1970 by one of Nixon’s people. Large amounts of research go into linguistics and how we use language. They train Republicans to use language as a powerful tool. Democrats don’t do this.

He then talks about intro cog-sci. Don’t think of an elephant. Of course, you think of an elephant. You need to realize the frame to negate it. This can be powerful when framing the words of politics. Framing is key because it makes it harder to discuss things. Tax relief. Who can be against a concept so beneficial as tax relief? Well, taxes are put to good use. But by framing it through the pain of the people rather than the use value, Republicans have been able to make it hard to discuss. Are you for or against the President’s tax relief plan? Hard to get at the issues from that framing.

Progressives like to eschew values, saying that there aren’t progressive values. Bullshit. Furthermore, people vote their values, their connections and their identity, not what is best for them. This helps to explain why poor mid-Westerners vote in favor of Republicans who continue to make them poorer and poorer and poorer…. The Republicans know this. Democrats think that they need to be more moderate to win votes; Republicans aren’t that stupid.

Lakoff introduced a whole framework about how the nation can be viewed as a family and how there are two different models of families – the strict father family and the nurturing parent family. He then shared a compelling amount of information on this topic that is really hard to summarize, but Metaphor, Morality and Politics is Lakoff’s written version of this.

Anyhow, there was so much more, so much sublety. And of course, the talk definitely motivated me to buy his new book: Moral Politics.

I have to admit that it’s nice to be in yet-another-school where the linguistics department is getting hyper political and speaking to the public. And, just like at Chomsky’s talks, there were plenty of annoying attendees who decided to pester the speaker in a screaming, not discussing kind of way. One had to be hauled off after he refused to let Lakoff talk. Another had to be engaged by one of the audience members who took the bullet for the rest of us. Of course, Lakoff joked about this all: remember, Berkeley is the home of the Free Speech movement. ::laugh::

relaxation and chillness

It has been a most wonderfully relaxing and chill week. My mom came into town and we wandered north to land of spas and wine and olive oil. It was true mother/daughter bonding time in a way that neither of us ever remembered doing before. If anyone ever needs a break from the chaos of the city, northern California is wonderful. Of course, we ended our little journey by spooking ourselves out at Bodega Bay where The Birds was filmed. ::gulp:: Gotta love Hitchcock!

I’ve also been on a hiking and dancing kick – making up for the laziness of months spent in front of a computer. It feels *so* good to get out, bounce around, relax, be goofy and chill out before admitting to summer responsibilities and intellectual challenges.

Oh, and i actually read a book! One that had (almost) nothing to do with work. I read Pattern Recognition because everyone kept telling me about the apophenia. I love the idea of being allergic to brands and i’m so sad that she lost that at the end.

And i saw a movie! I saw Super Size Me. I have to admit that i ended up craving McDs afterwards which made me feel *super* guilty. This is why i want brand allergies. I understand intellectually how badly i treat my body, but i really am a sucker for the blazing colors, fake smells and immediate feedback of cravings appeased. Ah yes, my weaknesses…

Ronald Burt, structural holes and creativity

Burt’s theories on structural holes were immensely influentual when i was writing “Faceted Id/entity.” Thus, i was stoked to read a discussion of his work in the NYTimes: Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outside Your Group. The article concerns his current research on creativity and how creative people are often noted to be bridges between diverse groups. They are taking material that is not valuable to one community and making use of it elsewhere where it is exceptionally valuable.

[Note to the operationally minded: Read the logical ordering of the above statements again. Burt’s research concerns tracking creative people. This does not necessarily mean that one becomes creative by positioning oneself as bridges. Logical ordering matters.]

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blog/author limits and MT

To answer Mena’s question about blog/author limits and the new licensing scheme:

I have an installation of MT that i use to help non-profits and/or small groups maintain blogs. They aren’t technical enough to run their own blogs and, at the time, other services didn’t provide the necessary functions.

I also have a friend who used his MT installation to pull friends off of Blogger and LiveJournal so that they could have trackbacks, comments and RSS amongst them.

Finally, for the class that i was TAing this semester, we had all students get on MT to blog assignments. We created an installation that hosts 40+ students. I realize that there’s an undiscussed educational license, but the hassle of going through that probably would’ve mean that i wouldn’t have chosen MT for the class. And getting a school stricken with Schwarzenegger syndrome to pay for software for a class is nowhere near easy.

All of the groups that i’m involved in would be completely screwed by the new scheme. My friend and i would be seen as sysadmins or service providers, even though what we are doing is simply supporting our friends/students who are not technical enough, not motivated enough to do this on their own. The folks we are supporting aren’t really bloggers, not in the sense that we normally talk about. Getting many of them to engage in this process has been difficult. There’s no way that they will pay for a service and there’s no way that i could afford ramping up to the next pricing level to continue supporting them. I also feel terrible because i can’t volunteer to continue helping people start out blogging.

For now, we’re just not upgrading while we consider what should be done. But i will definitely say that this pricing scheme does not make sense when trying to get the new/non-technical folks blogging. Furthermore, i’m a bit saddened that there’s no non-profit status in the license because this screws me in a different direction.