I tried to put the first video clip from Europe on YouTube at an internet cafe yesterday. It was a 33-megabyte clip, and after my hour had expired, only 20 megs got uploaded.
I did some disappointing math: at the rate of about 20 megs an hour, my 20 GIGS of footage will take around a thousand hours to upload. At the rate of about a dollar an hour that I pay for internet access, and using the internet for a maximum of an hour a day, I would eventually get all the footage uploaded in around three years, at the cost of a thousand dollars. Um, no thanks.
Then Luana reminded me that Sean also has the raw footage, plus unlimited high-speed internet access. Problem solved.
Also, if anyone is interested in calling, Luana´s cell phone number is 11-8646-3203. The country code for Brazil is 55. Cheap phone cards can be bought online at www.nobelcom.com.
We´re going to Prado beach over the weekend, where I´ll be finishing the Pinker books (The Blank Slate and The Language Instinct) and preparing the big forthcoming review, in addition to finally eating Moqueca.
Thursday, 30 August 2007
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
mailing address and pictures delivered as promised!
No big news. Luana and I are going to Prado, a beautiful beach that´s met by a freshwater river (though, are there any salty rivers?) over the weekend. We spent the majority of my five-hour lunch break yesterday watching footage from the Europe trip. I´m starting today to upload the videos to YouTube, but with the lousy internet speed, I´ll be lucky to be able to upload two minutes of video in an hour. And there are like 20 hours of video. So this will be a very slow-revealing series, which I guess will keep fans (by which I mean Mom, Dad, Sean, and Molly) tuned in for a long time. Search on YouTube for muldoon2007 (my username) to get to my channel and all the videos.
ALso, I uploaded some pictures on previous posts and now have my mailing address. It´s
Student Center
Avenida Salvador 1017
Centro Itabatan, Mucuri
Mucuri, BA CEP: 45830000
ALso, I uploaded some pictures on previous posts and now have my mailing address. It´s
Student Center
Avenida Salvador 1017
Centro Itabatan, Mucuri
Mucuri, BA CEP: 45830000
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
August 27 slightly delayed blog
Luana and I spent the weekend at a massive campout for Seventh-Day Adventists. I can't tell whether the experience was more or less weird than it sounds. In any event, there was no doubting that the double mattress in our room was like heaven last night compared to the camping setup. I slept about twelve hours last night and would have missed my first tutee in the morning, had she not arrived forty minutes late. I was nonetheless energized, having eaten my first of undoubtedly many fried egg sandwiches this morning. Each one -- two eggs on fresh French bread -- costs the equivalent of 10 American cents.
Okay, so on my way home from work on Thursday, I ran into Mara, one of my intermediate English students, who was headed to a friend's house nearby. Having left work early due to yet another cancellation, I tagged along and met her group of friends, all of whom are around my age and fun to talk to. After the cursory cultural exchange moment -- Brazilians always ask whether we Americans understand the complexity of the country beyond Ipanema, Carnaval, and the jungle -- they invited me (and Luana as well) to the campout that was going to take place this weekend. They said that it was really more about meeting people than about religion, and since we didn't have any plans for the weekend, it seemed like a good option. Luana wasn't feeling great and thought that Adventists were especially strict, so she didn't really want to go. I'm completely ignorant about Protestant denominations -- are Adventists even Protestant? -- but Mara and her friends were definitely not hard-core conservative types. So I eventually subdued the dissent and convinced Luana that in any case, it would be worth it to get out of Itabatan for a few days.
The bus left from the Adventist church in Itabatan on Friday and made it to Moroba, in the neighboring state of Espirito Santo, in about four hours. Luana and I sat across the aisle from the local pastor, Robismario, who was probably the most immature adult I've ever seen, seriously. When one of the adults was walking through the aisles to give out candy to pious or well-behaved kids, Robismario earnestly waved his hands in the air indicating his interest in the candy and snatched it at the first opportunity. When someone threw candy in an up-for-grabs lottery, Robismario naturally towered over his neighbors and won the candy. He had to be pleaded by the adolescents nearby to share some of it. Oh, and on the way home (I'm getting ahead of myself), Robismario broke tradition and refused to allow the bus to stop for lunch. This led to a near-mutiny, which the more responsible adults quelled by holding a vote. The pro-food coalition naturally won and the adults convinced Robismario to allow the bus to stop. Once at the restaurant, those had voted against stopping -- because they either weren't hungry or wanted to support Robism‡rio -- stayed in the bus. Robismario, of course, was among the first off the bus and in line for food. Ha!
I don't want to make a generalization about Adventists, though. Mara and her friends were a lot of fun and were the leaders of the pro-food coalition. Like they had said, the religious stuff was a very minor part of the whole experience. For them and the hordes of young people at the campout, it was a chance to meet new people outside the bounds of small-town life, and especially to find like-Godded romantic partners. Which brings me to the part about the whole thing that struck me the most about the whole weekend, which was how incredibly good people looked, despite the fact that we were all sleeping in tents on a dirt out in the middle of nowhere. People dressed to impress. I mean, there were showers, but they were in outdoor shacks and without any hot water, yet everyone (except Luana and me, who haven't been weaned off hot water) took showers every morning. Then they went back to their tents, slipped into their Sunday dresses and suits, whipped out the pocket mirrors, hooked up their electric hair straighteners to stray outlets, and went to church. It was really amusing and impressive to see people in high heels hiking across the campground. Being my lazy self, I brought my camera but only took a few lousy pictures.
The religious activities at the event primarily involved half-singing along to the two theme songs, which I presume are exclusively Adventist songs. But seriously, there were many small events and services, and these two songs were very well-represented. On Sunday morning, Luana and I went to find a place to sit after packing up our tent, and we ended up in church. At one point, a youth trio -- they were called the Trio Life -- went up to the stage to sing. There was a problem with their backing track, so another lady took the stage to entertain the crowd while they fixed the technical difficulties. She ended up singing what she called a crowd favorite, which was of course one of the two theme songs: "Jesus Amem." By the time she was done, the Trio Life went up, the backing track played, and sure enough, it was an alternative arrangement of "Jesus Amem." Nobody in the audience seemed to find this as funny as I did.
There was a truly passionate and profound sermon, which was given by a pastor from Rio Grande do Sul, a state in the extreme south of Brazil. It was about optimism, about enjoying the good things in life and not complaining about the bad things. It related the story of a parishioner who was always complaining to a group of followers of Moses from the Old Testament. The followers were crossing the desert in search of Canaan, and the only ones who survived were the ones who avoided complaining ... or something like that. I can't quite tell since my Portuguese isn't that great and my knowledge of the Old Testament is much worse. Anyway, I can't agree more. Complaining is completely futile and completely counterproductive. Similarly, being optimistic isn't just a convenient personality trait, but a vital component of success and personal growth. One of these days I'll finally get around to writing the complete Logic of Optimism essay, though I imagine the same message is to be found in most motivational speeches, self-help books and great success stories.
Speaking of writing, I've been itching to write my review of Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate. I'm only about a hundred pages into the book, but I think it's really fascinating and at the same time completely unsurprising. It's incredible how many popular psychology books rehash the same famous studies and findings. What's generally annoying to me about the book is that it is so one-sided: Pinker makes it clear that it is a Nature-Nurture book and that he's on the side of Nature. Of course, he acknowledges that nothing in human behavior is completely determined or completely unrelated to biology, but wherever there is room for debate, he chooses to err firmly on the side of determinism and mechanism instead of creativity or flexibility. He also does a bad job of dismissing connectionism, which is really what the Luana model is about and which is much simpler and more elegant than Pinker's metaphor of the mind as a giant toolbox with all these tools that sometimes work together and sometimes don't.
Okay. More later. I have to go to class now.
Okay, so on my way home from work on Thursday, I ran into Mara, one of my intermediate English students, who was headed to a friend's house nearby. Having left work early due to yet another cancellation, I tagged along and met her group of friends, all of whom are around my age and fun to talk to. After the cursory cultural exchange moment -- Brazilians always ask whether we Americans understand the complexity of the country beyond Ipanema, Carnaval, and the jungle -- they invited me (and Luana as well) to the campout that was going to take place this weekend. They said that it was really more about meeting people than about religion, and since we didn't have any plans for the weekend, it seemed like a good option. Luana wasn't feeling great and thought that Adventists were especially strict, so she didn't really want to go. I'm completely ignorant about Protestant denominations -- are Adventists even Protestant? -- but Mara and her friends were definitely not hard-core conservative types. So I eventually subdued the dissent and convinced Luana that in any case, it would be worth it to get out of Itabatan for a few days.
The bus left from the Adventist church in Itabatan on Friday and made it to Moroba, in the neighboring state of Espirito Santo, in about four hours. Luana and I sat across the aisle from the local pastor, Robismario, who was probably the most immature adult I've ever seen, seriously. When one of the adults was walking through the aisles to give out candy to pious or well-behaved kids, Robismario earnestly waved his hands in the air indicating his interest in the candy and snatched it at the first opportunity. When someone threw candy in an up-for-grabs lottery, Robismario naturally towered over his neighbors and won the candy. He had to be pleaded by the adolescents nearby to share some of it. Oh, and on the way home (I'm getting ahead of myself), Robismario broke tradition and refused to allow the bus to stop for lunch. This led to a near-mutiny, which the more responsible adults quelled by holding a vote. The pro-food coalition naturally won and the adults convinced Robismario to allow the bus to stop. Once at the restaurant, those had voted against stopping -- because they either weren't hungry or wanted to support Robism‡rio -- stayed in the bus. Robismario, of course, was among the first off the bus and in line for food. Ha!
I don't want to make a generalization about Adventists, though. Mara and her friends were a lot of fun and were the leaders of the pro-food coalition. Like they had said, the religious stuff was a very minor part of the whole experience. For them and the hordes of young people at the campout, it was a chance to meet new people outside the bounds of small-town life, and especially to find like-Godded romantic partners. Which brings me to the part about the whole thing that struck me the most about the whole weekend, which was how incredibly good people looked, despite the fact that we were all sleeping in tents on a dirt out in the middle of nowhere. People dressed to impress. I mean, there were showers, but they were in outdoor shacks and without any hot water, yet everyone (except Luana and me, who haven't been weaned off hot water) took showers every morning. Then they went back to their tents, slipped into their Sunday dresses and suits, whipped out the pocket mirrors, hooked up their electric hair straighteners to stray outlets, and went to church. It was really amusing and impressive to see people in high heels hiking across the campground. Being my lazy self, I brought my camera but only took a few lousy pictures.
The religious activities at the event primarily involved half-singing along to the two theme songs, which I presume are exclusively Adventist songs. But seriously, there were many small events and services, and these two songs were very well-represented. On Sunday morning, Luana and I went to find a place to sit after packing up our tent, and we ended up in church. At one point, a youth trio -- they were called the Trio Life -- went up to the stage to sing. There was a problem with their backing track, so another lady took the stage to entertain the crowd while they fixed the technical difficulties. She ended up singing what she called a crowd favorite, which was of course one of the two theme songs: "Jesus Amem." By the time she was done, the Trio Life went up, the backing track played, and sure enough, it was an alternative arrangement of "Jesus Amem." Nobody in the audience seemed to find this as funny as I did.
There was a truly passionate and profound sermon, which was given by a pastor from Rio Grande do Sul, a state in the extreme south of Brazil. It was about optimism, about enjoying the good things in life and not complaining about the bad things. It related the story of a parishioner who was always complaining to a group of followers of Moses from the Old Testament. The followers were crossing the desert in search of Canaan, and the only ones who survived were the ones who avoided complaining ... or something like that. I can't quite tell since my Portuguese isn't that great and my knowledge of the Old Testament is much worse. Anyway, I can't agree more. Complaining is completely futile and completely counterproductive. Similarly, being optimistic isn't just a convenient personality trait, but a vital component of success and personal growth. One of these days I'll finally get around to writing the complete Logic of Optimism essay, though I imagine the same message is to be found in most motivational speeches, self-help books and great success stories.
Speaking of writing, I've been itching to write my review of Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate. I'm only about a hundred pages into the book, but I think it's really fascinating and at the same time completely unsurprising. It's incredible how many popular psychology books rehash the same famous studies and findings. What's generally annoying to me about the book is that it is so one-sided: Pinker makes it clear that it is a Nature-Nurture book and that he's on the side of Nature. Of course, he acknowledges that nothing in human behavior is completely determined or completely unrelated to biology, but wherever there is room for debate, he chooses to err firmly on the side of determinism and mechanism instead of creativity or flexibility. He also does a bad job of dismissing connectionism, which is really what the Luana model is about and which is much simpler and more elegant than Pinker's metaphor of the mind as a giant toolbox with all these tools that sometimes work together and sometimes don't.
Okay. More later. I have to go to class now.
August 23 delayed blog
I'm at my computer in my room in Brazil. I tried to plug it in to charge, but the electricity is unreliable at best, so I'll have to charge it somewhere else. This also means I'll have to stop writing in an hour or so when the battery dies.
My room is a room. Actually, two rooms: a room room and a bathroom. My employer is paying somewhere around $75 a month for the room, which I think also includes water and electricity. The details of my job compensation are under permanent negotiation, but that's a good thing. I get surprise perks like a borrowed gas stove and TV and flexible hours and frequent cancellations which allow me to stay in my room. Like this morning, when I was supposed to give private lessons at 8:30am and 2:30pm, but both students cancelled and freed up my entire day until 5:30 or 5:45. Back to the room: I've got a double-size matress on the floor where Luana and I sleep, which faces our borrowed TV now hooked up to our new and overpriced PlayStation 2. What's the name of the piece of furniture that hold clothes in drawers?! I always forget. Closet? No. Bookshelf? No. Cabinet? I'm going to check my Microsoft Word thesaurus. It's not a trunk or a chest -- it's just some drawers. Whatever. My books are stacked next to the TV. I'm hoping to read most of them while I'm here, since I have three-day weekends every week. Maybe I should say three-day vacations and four-day vacat-ends. Back to the room ... we have a few things taped to walls, then we have our guitars and violin and mandolin on the floor, Luana's extra clothes in her suitcase, and then a small bathroom. It's got an electric showerhead for hot water, but we're starting to appreciate the wisdom of cold showers. When the electrician came to install the showerhead, he told us that his youthful appearance at age forty was due primarily to his habit of only taking freezing cold showers. He also said that eight minutes should be long enough to wash an elephant, which I thought was funny in light of the fact that I'm used to taking 20-minute showers.
Fuck, I might as well just take pictures and save my thousand words. Enough describing the room.
My room is a room. Actually, two rooms: a room room and a bathroom. My employer is paying somewhere around $75 a month for the room, which I think also includes water and electricity. The details of my job compensation are under permanent negotiation, but that's a good thing. I get surprise perks like a borrowed gas stove and TV and flexible hours and frequent cancellations which allow me to stay in my room. Like this morning, when I was supposed to give private lessons at 8:30am and 2:30pm, but both students cancelled and freed up my entire day until 5:30 or 5:45. Back to the room: I've got a double-size matress on the floor where Luana and I sleep, which faces our borrowed TV now hooked up to our new and overpriced PlayStation 2. What's the name of the piece of furniture that hold clothes in drawers?! I always forget. Closet? No. Bookshelf? No. Cabinet? I'm going to check my Microsoft Word thesaurus. It's not a trunk or a chest -- it's just some drawers. Whatever. My books are stacked next to the TV. I'm hoping to read most of them while I'm here, since I have three-day weekends every week. Maybe I should say three-day vacations and four-day vacat-ends. Back to the room ... we have a few things taped to walls, then we have our guitars and violin and mandolin on the floor, Luana's extra clothes in her suitcase, and then a small bathroom. It's got an electric showerhead for hot water, but we're starting to appreciate the wisdom of cold showers. When the electrician came to install the showerhead, he told us that his youthful appearance at age forty was due primarily to his habit of only taking freezing cold showers. He also said that eight minutes should be long enough to wash an elephant, which I thought was funny in light of the fact that I'm used to taking 20-minute showers.
Fuck, I might as well just take pictures and save my thousand words. Enough describing the room.
The important thing is my job, which is teaching English. Now, to be a college-educated native English speaker teaching in a Brazilian language school is like being Leonardo Da Vinci teaching kindergarten. It's a breeze. All the books and materials are of good quality and I just guide students through them. The same few kinds of activities -- games, translations, invidivual readings, whatever -- happen over and over again, which means that I do not have to prepare at all for class. I just walk in, pick up the materials, and go. Of course, I try to do some new and different things that require some extra work, but I don't have to, and nobody would notice or care if I didn't.
I'll probably have more stories to tell about the English classes. It's only been three days (four if you count today, when I walked in only to find my classes cancelled), but I already kind of know the students pretty well. I'm all about conversation, since pretty much everyone learns a language for the sake of communication, unless they're really intellectual and learning Latin, which can be good, too. I have some private students and I already know them quite well: in the course of the first two hours, it's usually possible to cover family, occupation, brief life history, religious views, and a person's conception of her situation in society. Last night, I talked for a solid hour about the details of the eucalyptus industry with a guy who works in the big eucalyptus company here in town. By next week, our conversations are inevitably going to move more directly towards intimate life details, since it's the next easiest thing to talk about. If I were a local, we could talk like locals and gossip, but since I'm not, all we can really talk about is our lives. Then I'll get to play psychologist, which is something I've always wanted to do but never until now felt like I could ever do. My whole new Luana model at least gives me a basis for talking about emotions and minds.
Luana's making lunch now. Our first meal at home! I'm hungry.
I think it'll be good to do a real blog, to actually recount events and my thoughts about them as they happen.
Online in Itabatan, Bahia, BRAZIL
I´ve finally got my system down for writing and communicating in Brazil. As of now, there´s no internet at the school where I work, which means I have to pay for internet time at cafes. So I think the best solution is to (1) write blog entries offline on my laptop and then post them when I get online and (2) arrange regular times when I´ll be online so I can do Skype. The weekend would probably be best for me, because I don´t have any classes on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. If anybody could leave comments on this post with times they´d be available, then I´ll get back with a set time that´s most mutually convenient. Okay?
Now I´ll post two blogs that I wrote offline. Coming soon: pictures and my mailing address.
Love,
Mickey
Now I´ll post two blogs that I wrote offline. Coming soon: pictures and my mailing address.
Love,
Mickey
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Give Dennis a Chance
Most people I know never even take the time to read Kucinich's campaign platform.
Anyway, I'm not saying that he's my guy for sure, or that he's completely perfect. Come on, he's tiny and maybe slightly Napoleonic. But the "electability" escape is an insult to our faculties of reason. You know what, people could make Kucinich electable: he's got perfectly sensible stances on the issues, he's experienced, he's tough, and he's been a fighter his whole life. But if nobody makes any noise, the media coverage defaults to people like Bush and Hillary and Obama because they're they've got the most celebrity status. Plain and simple.
For people who don't think Kucinich is genuine, check out his record. He was a strong opponent of the Iraq war from the start, unlike Hillary. He and Gravel are the only full supporters of gay marriage, which is the only genuinely liberal position on the matter. His efforts as mayor of Cleveland standing up to the Cleveland Trust Company sent him into "political Siberia," only to be applauded years later when it became clear that he was right.
Now to the issues:
I'm not sure what the Wikipedians meant by "free love," but I'm sure Kucinich could find a more politically correct way to express his policy. If he's for removing antiquated legal barriers to unrestricted sexual behavior, then I'd guess that the majority of young people -- not just in the north, but across the country -- would find his policy appealing. Can any liberal American honestly say that certain types of (non-coerced) should be banned? Also, it was our parents' generation -- the now-powerful baby boomers -- who invented free love! And besides, we're talking about winning the Democratic nomination, not charming every single voter in every corner of every state.
I'm not sure what to say about reparations -- maybe Pfoho people who have thought about the issue more could chime in -- but I definitely think they are worth considering. Even if they aren't the best idea, I am very much in support of creative thinking for combating the lasting racial inequities, beyond affirmative action and British-style rigid schooling and testing (by that I mean No Child Left Behind and the KIPP etc. schools that are its champions. They are frighteningly strict and anti-progressive me.)
About Iraq, I think that an international peacekeeping force is the only way to go, and it has to be strong and fierce, but much less American and partisan. Clearly, abandoning the country would leave it in utter chaos, and this isn't what Kucinich is advocating. But keeping American forces there will perpetuate the notion that Americans are occupiers and not peacekeepers. My best hope is that an international force could more effectively do something like what Charles de Gaulle did in Senegal when it was considering independence -- organize a national referendum, giving citizens the option to choose either a particular system of government and power structure imposed by the UN, or to have all the forces pull out and leave the country in perpertual chaos. I still harbor hope that the ravaged citizens could choose order. Either way, the US could never pull such a move off on its own.
Visas and immigration are complicated and require quite a bit more investigation. I asked my mom, who happens to be an immigration lawyer, about the L-1 visa, and she said that it really is being exploited a lot by foreign companies, even though it also serves a perfectly permissible purpose. What it's supposed to do is allow experts about specific business or technology to cross borders to train branches of multinational corporation. What some Indian companies do is they create nominal but useless branches in the US, then send their employees to work here on L-1 visas, which means they can get paid a ton more than they would in India. To eliminate the visas altogether might be extreme, but to brush off the issue entirely is worse.
Finally, Kucinich supports impeaching Cheney, which I think is an honorable thing to do. Cheney is a crook and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. To get Cheney on an orderly show trial would help us heal the wounds that he and Bush created, and help us pass more of the blame for the Iraq mess on their shoulders, since they are the ones who masterminded the malicious deception about WMDs in the first place.
We have to resist celebrity worship and other regressive heuristics if we want our most important decisions -- voting included -- to mean anything.
Anyway, I'm not saying that he's my guy for sure, or that he's completely perfect. Come on, he's tiny and maybe slightly Napoleonic. But the "electability" escape is an insult to our faculties of reason. You know what, people could make Kucinich electable: he's got perfectly sensible stances on the issues, he's experienced, he's tough, and he's been a fighter his whole life. But if nobody makes any noise, the media coverage defaults to people like Bush and Hillary and Obama because they're they've got the most celebrity status. Plain and simple.
For people who don't think Kucinich is genuine, check out his record. He was a strong opponent of the Iraq war from the start, unlike Hillary. He and Gravel are the only full supporters of gay marriage, which is the only genuinely liberal position on the matter. His efforts as mayor of Cleveland standing up to the Cleveland Trust Company sent him into "political Siberia," only to be applauded years later when it became clear that he was right.
Now to the issues:
I'm not sure what the Wikipedians meant by "free love," but I'm sure Kucinich could find a more politically correct way to express his policy. If he's for removing antiquated legal barriers to unrestricted sexual behavior, then I'd guess that the majority of young people -- not just in the north, but across the country -- would find his policy appealing. Can any liberal American honestly say that certain types of (non-coerced) should be banned? Also, it was our parents' generation -- the now-powerful baby boomers -- who invented free love! And besides, we're talking about winning the Democratic nomination, not charming every single voter in every corner of every state.
I'm not sure what to say about reparations -- maybe Pfoho people who have thought about the issue more could chime in -- but I definitely think they are worth considering. Even if they aren't the best idea, I am very much in support of creative thinking for combating the lasting racial inequities, beyond affirmative action and British-style rigid schooling and testing (by that I mean No Child Left Behind and the KIPP etc. schools that are its champions. They are frighteningly strict and anti-progressive me.)
About Iraq, I think that an international peacekeeping force is the only way to go, and it has to be strong and fierce, but much less American and partisan. Clearly, abandoning the country would leave it in utter chaos, and this isn't what Kucinich is advocating. But keeping American forces there will perpetuate the notion that Americans are occupiers and not peacekeepers. My best hope is that an international force could more effectively do something like what Charles de Gaulle did in Senegal when it was considering independence -- organize a national referendum, giving citizens the option to choose either a particular system of government and power structure imposed by the UN, or to have all the forces pull out and leave the country in perpertual chaos. I still harbor hope that the ravaged citizens could choose order. Either way, the US could never pull such a move off on its own.
Visas and immigration are complicated and require quite a bit more investigation. I asked my mom, who happens to be an immigration lawyer, about the L-1 visa, and she said that it really is being exploited a lot by foreign companies, even though it also serves a perfectly permissible purpose. What it's supposed to do is allow experts about specific business or technology to cross borders to train branches of multinational corporation. What some Indian companies do is they create nominal but useless branches in the US, then send their employees to work here on L-1 visas, which means they can get paid a ton more than they would in India. To eliminate the visas altogether might be extreme, but to brush off the issue entirely is worse.
Finally, Kucinich supports impeaching Cheney, which I think is an honorable thing to do. Cheney is a crook and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. To get Cheney on an orderly show trial would help us heal the wounds that he and Bush created, and help us pass more of the blame for the Iraq mess on their shoulders, since they are the ones who masterminded the malicious deception about WMDs in the first place.
We have to resist celebrity worship and other regressive heuristics if we want our most important decisions -- voting included -- to mean anything.
The State of Politics at Harvard
Why are the most educated students in the world sometimes incapable of working together and supporting each other, even though they know it pays off in the long term?
Why do students continue to issue vacuous threats to the Pfoho community when the it's the very house community that provides our only sustained moral education at Harvard?
Why aren't more students supporting Dennis Kucinich?
Why are politically-minded students obsessing with national politics and policies when the most creative and difficult decisions are made at the state level?
Why are we students craving power at the national level when we can barely handle our immediate relationships?
Why do students continue to issue vacuous threats to the Pfoho community when the it's the very house community that provides our only sustained moral education at Harvard?
Why aren't more students supporting Dennis Kucinich?
Why are politically-minded students obsessing with national politics and policies when the most creative and difficult decisions are made at the state level?
Why are we students craving power at the national level when we can barely handle our immediate relationships?
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