February 28, 2006 at 7:30 pm
(Uncategorized)
Today’s post is a two-parter. I just happen to have thoughts on two tangentially related topics that are worth posting. So here goes:
Part I: The masses speak?
I’ve been traveling some the past couple of months. In fact, I’ve been out of town for some or all of all but one week in January and one week in February. My arrival in my pseudo-hometown is like this: I get off the plane, go to the rental car counter, go to the rental car and program the radio stations I listen to in order to avoid becoming stuptefyingly bored while driving listing to right-dial (aka 92.1 or higher on your FM dial) drivel. This latest time, it was a little different. You see, I always go through the motions of checking the car’s radio first to see what stations are actually programmed (so I can program over static unless it’s unavoidable.) When I checked the first preset, it was the first station I usually program. When I checked the second station, it was the second station I usually program. At this point, I began to wonder if I had actually been given the exact car I’d rented the previous week, but for various reasons it was clear to me that it wasn’t a car I’d ever rented previously. (I’d only rented this particular model, which happens to be a model I would remember, the previous week; that car was a (slightly) different color and had more miles. Well, you asked!)
So…this was a pleasant surprise but not a huge shock. “Good,” I was thinking to myself, “someone else likes public and college radio.” As I got further down the road, I began to think about programming a third station, one that doesn’t come in well near the airport because it’s in a town about sixty miles away. So I hit the “3″ button to begin checking for open presets and lo and behold, it was already set to the third station! Needless to say, this made my day.
Incidentally, if you ever find yourself in Eastern Kentucky, check out Americana Crossroads on 90.3 FM. It’s one of the only places I’ve found to hear bluegrass music in the part of the Bluegrass State I’ve been stomping around, but the host plays quite a lot of other great music as well. I also recommend the University of Kentucky’s WRFL 88.1 FM if you happen into its (unfortunately small) listening area.
Part II: Visiting the Zulu King
Speaking of college radio, in my most recent venture into the radio programming world, I presented a New Orleans/Louisiana music show. Of course, each year I did a Mardi Gras program, but I did so halfheartedly. I never really had any enthusiasm to follow Professor Longhair’s advice to “go and see the Mardi Gras.” I would have preferred to see New Orleans during Jazzfest, and even then, some of the Cajun/Zydeco fans I met during this time suggested to avoid the area then too. Then that hurricane hit and it seemed to become a moot point. So I’m glad that the city is continuing on with its tradition even through conditions that most of us would be hard-pressed to celebrate.
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February 21, 2006 at 7:10 pm
(Uncategorized)
Muriel Watson’s comments on why a fence between Mexico and California is appropriate (from The World, 2/21/06) struck me. She suggests that having fences to maintain one’s property (from neighborhood kids or dogs in her example) are socially acceptable, so why not a fence that protects the inhabitants of one country from another?
It’s a stretch to extend the logic behind protecting personal property to protecting a nation (although this doesn’t mean a fence or “wall” is unwarranted, nor do I mean to take away from Ms. Watson’s other concerns regarding the ugliness around the open border that existed in Southern California until 1989). Specifically, property rights are sacrosanct because they are seen as the well-earned fruits of labor; in cases where property is handed down, our culture has condemned those who don’t continue to “earn” the right, while the poor but hard-working citizen is considered a model for what America can be. Meritocracy is supposed to be our keystone, yet Ms. Watson seems to be willing to deny the American dream to some simply because they weren’t born in the right place.
A fence may well be part of the solution (though please don’t ask me to be part of the team that has to maintain it). But any solution that doesn’t allow for the safe, legal flow of people between the US and Mexico is destined to fail.
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February 16, 2006 at 8:01 pm
(Uncategorized)
I’ve always sort of understood the argument that the media was right-leaning, but I’m beginning to understand how some might think it’s left-leaning, too (after all, it all depends on your point of view, right?)
The “conservative mainstream media” argument is that the mainstream news was very willing to drum up support for the war on Iraq, willing to show it in a good light, and willing to avoid some of the unpleasant aspects of it (at least at first). Now, the media looks to be doing conservatives a favor by keeping news stories like that of the Downing Street memo hush-hush here in the US.
The “liberal mainstream media” argument naturally has some similarities: isn’t it interesting how difficult it is to get some stories out of the view of the press. In fact, this was the argument on Fox News this morning–Brit Hume laughed derisively at the though of anyone, especially those liberal media shrillies who would suggest that the VP’s decision to keep things quiet for a day or two was just another symptom of an administration gone wrong. (He has a point, although he expressed it very poorly.)
Without having seen the other network channels, I have to imagine that what the pundits on Fox claim is there is probably at least somewhat representative. I can imagine news outlets in general trying to keep this non-story in circulation because its something that will hold the public interest, and that would look to a conservative to be “liberal bias.” This is funny, because the truly left-leaning news source I listened to right after watching the Fox News piece was discussing not Cheney but Guantanamo and the lack of press that the “White House memo” received. They’d moved on. The problem isn’t the “liberal” media or the “conservative” media, which are both marginalized at any rate. The problem is the mainstream media, which digs into stories with little nutritional value because they know that junk news sells. Now this isn’t a revelation, but can you see how easy it is, when you analyze the news, to misread the mainstream’s sensationalism as bias?
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February 14, 2006 at 8:24 am
(Uncategorized)
Fresh from winning a judgement that forces consumers in Europe to consider American GM food, we now find out that the US is working behind the scenes to punish Palestinians for their choice of government.
Policy-makers in the US and Israel will no doubt claim that this policy of strangulation would only be put in place if the Hamas government continues to encourage violence against Israel. But the possible drawbacks to the policy are larger than the benefits it can hope to gain. The obvious drawback is that the US will show itself to only superficially support Democracy, which will hurt democratization efforts in other countries. This would be a shame in light of US support for democratically elected governments in Iraq and Afghanistan that would tend to appear not to be the “first choice.” But the rest of the world is going to judge America’s policy on its faults regardless of its successes.
The US could isolate a Hamas-led government that wasn’t democratically elected. But if it’s honest about propagating Democracy in the Mideast, it will have to hope that Hamas quickly realizes that running a state isn’t as easy as running an opposition or that it quickly becomes clear that its unfit to lead and that demands for a change back arise organically.
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February 13, 2006 at 9:55 am
(Uncategorized)
Quite a reaction from some in Europe to the WTO’s recent ruling that European bans of American genetically modified (GM) food violated free trade rules.
Certainly, forcing someone to buy something they don’t want in the name of “free trade” makes little sense. And it’s difficult to prove that GM is essentially benign, as there is always the chance that, down the road, some evidence will appear that would show the opposite. Can you blame Europeans for being cautious? (Honestly, though, I suspect the European fears are overblown–genetically modified, as far as I can see, is basically just speeding along the process of “breeding” varieties that has been done for centuries.)
Nonetheless, poor judgement is likely to further hurt the WTO’s image, and requests like the this one from the US to review the case are going to damage rather than promote the idea of free trade.
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February 10, 2006 at 7:24 pm
(Civil Rights)
I have a difficult time believing President Bush’s suggestion that a terrorist plot was foiled in 2002. It’s awfully convenient for him to be able to say: “look what we can do when we have the right tools” while his administration is trying to defend the use of one of those tools.
The administration’s apparently lackadaisical attempts to alert LA mayor Villaraigosa that the President was going to refer to the plot doesn’t help convince me, and the fact that mayor Villaraigosa didn’t know anything about the plot adds to my skepticism. It would be interesting to hear former mayor Hahn’s comments on the subject. If Hahn knew, why wasn’t the information passed along to his successor? And if he didn’t know…well, I don’t know which is scarier.
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February 9, 2006 at 8:21 pm
(Education)
I see that there are murmurings about developing standardized tests for US colleges.
You’re kidding, right?
Even Charles Miller, who appears to be the big proponent of the policy, suggests that it would be impossible to judge students of all disciplines on the same criteria. So what exactly would be the point? Perhaps Mr Miller’s college education was slightly different than mine, but the people I knew didn’t take “reading, writing and ‘rithmetic.” Our engineering education didn’t necessarily nurture our writing ability, and I’m sure my friends in the soft sciences didn’t have many opportunities to enhance their math skills. Besides, if colleges are graduating illiterate students, perhaps the root problem lies in the, uh, elementary schools?
Furthermore, I doubt the sincerity of Mr Miller’s concern that people are unsure about the quality of education at a particular school. It may well be muddied by schools such as Yale that have reputations that far exceed the abilities of their alumni. But people realize that particular schools are good, others are less so and that there is a certain ebb and flow as some colleges improve and others decline. And sure, it’s imprecise science, but adding another test result to the mix will make that imprecision worse, not better.
It’s not a big secret that the Administration would like to “breach” what they call the “last liberal bastion” that is academia. (How do we get rid of the pinkos? I know, let’s attack the intellectuals!) I suspect that any test approved by a Republican government so manipulated by the far right would reward schools that focus on business or hard sciences while punishing liberal arts colleges. After all, the reactionary right refuses to accept that society needs the pragmatists and the idealists. So if, a generation from now, a student even knows where Prussia was, we’ll know it’s because their military history is good. They’ll have no idea about the reasons why the wars were fought (or not) in the first place.
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