[distillations]

Discursive and Material Effects of a Movement: OWS as a case study

Jason — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:31:38 +0000

Sometimes, I get really annoyed when people say a movement like “Occupy Wall Street” doesn’t have a purpose or its just the anarchic activities of a bunch of ne’er-do-wells. Perhaps it is those things, but that doesn’t mean that it has no political effect.

So, the point of this post is not to take a stand on the movement either way, but to articulate in clear terms, with supporting evidence, that a movement without an easily perceptible agenda can have both discursive and material effects on political activity in a nation.

Not having a single goal/spokesperson/agenda/policy prescription/etc. is not the same as not having an effect. They’re occupying space, both literally and in the cognitive sense; consequently, we are thinking and doing different things because of it. Notice the effect on political discourse in the media:

[Graph: mentions of the phrase "income inequality" in the media over the past two months]

“Whatever the objectives of protesters involved in Occupy Wall Street, they have succeeded in engaging the country in a conversation about income inequality,” writes Dylan Byers at Ben Smith’s new and expanded blog. “A quick search of the news — including print articles, web stories and broadcast transcripts — via Nexis reveals a significant rise in the use of the term ‘income inequality,’ from less than 91 instances in the week before the occupation started to almost 500 instances last week.”

(Ezra Klein on his Washington Post blog)

There is a steady shift in the discourse. Heck, Paul Ryan is talking about income inequality.

And even if many in the general population see OWS as a group of kids sitting around instead of getting jobs, Wall Street and its lobbyists are taking notice. Those are the material effects:

[excerpted]

A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”

The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.

CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.

According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

(Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky on the blog of Up with Chris Hayes)

I can totally understand why somebody would disagree with this movement. I get it, and we can have a really good conversation about it. But these people are making a difference–it might not be the difference that you want, but that doesn’t mean you can act like it’s a bunch of hippies doing nothing.

In short, it’s not anarchy or crazy nonsense. The evidence seems to show the opposite: slow, deliberate changes to the ways in which people around the country think about politics, economics, and society–and the subsequent anxieties of prevailing institutions that have a stake in paying attention to and arresting those changes.

MLK on the purpose of demonstration

Jason — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:35:37 +0000

Again I contend that we are not doing more harm than good in demonstration because I think demonstration serves the purpose of bringing the issues out in the open. I have never felt that demonstrations could actually solve the problem. They call attention to the problem. They dramatize the existence of certain social ills that could very easily be ignored if you did not have demonstrations, and I think the initial reaction to demonstrations is always negative.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 21, 1966
On “Meet the Press”

The Nietzsche Family Circus

Jason — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:35:39 +0000

This site takes a random Family Circus and puts it with a random Nietzsche quote. My first two:

LOLculture is famous! Ish.

Jason — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:17:08 +0000

Harmonic Dissidents, an online magazine, recently re-published one of Charles Keil’s old articles, and they asked me if they could spruce it up with one of the pictures from my other site, LOLculture:

This particular image was created by my good friend Kurt Baer.

Original Post: http://www.lolculture.com/charles-keil-wants-you-to-know-about-his-groo

Brothers West and Smiley miss (or are ignoring) an important point

Jason — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:41:43 +0000

I much respect the strong positions Tavis Smiley and Cornel West take with respect to the poor and the disenfranchised, of all color and creed. Their voices are important ones that force us all to refocus our lenses vis-a-vis the status quo. That said, I find their continued criticism of President Obama somewhat myopic–not because I think that the President is a saint, but because I think they are missing the point.

In an interview with Ed Schultz, Dr. West characterized the president as having “missed the moment” to focus on homeowners and poverty. However, pinning the blame on a single person–even the President of the most powerful nation in the world– only serves to shift the blame away from ourselves. If there was a “moment” as Dr. West stated, then we all missed it. Indeed, it was never Obama’s opportunity to take–it was our’s. “Yes we can”–if we want to.

Seeing the fabricated problems brought about by the staunch Tea Party caucus in the past few months, I see both a very sad truth and a lesson: if you want a reality, you have to MAKE that reality. Tea Party Republicans have managed to construct the world they believe in by controlling the narrative, rising up together, and fighting for it. The government will never become an advocate for the poor and disenfranchised before the American people do so.

Daily Accountability with help from Google

Jason — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:12:44 +0000

This semester, I have a lot of work, but it’s all going to have to be self-structured. So I took a strategy from a Noah Kagan blog post, “Daily Accountability Marketing Metrics“, in which he asks those working for him to fill out a daily form that asks them what specific work they’ve done as part of their duties for that day. What I like about the forms he uses is that they are both metric and reminder.

So, for example, the first question on his form is:

# of tweets put out
target is 2 a day. use sharefeed
_______

It’s basic, but also clever. It’s easy–just measure this task associated with your work. But it also parenthetically provides expectations and guidelines for that task. And through repetition, both the task and the guidelines become habitual.

At least for me, it’s not hard to remember what I have to do overall–this semester, it’s just finish your damn thesis. But, for whatever reason, the inability to quantify that often feels paralytic–it’s the same as my students who face the prospect of studying all-science-ever to prepare for the MCAT. It’s just this gigantic task, so I don’t know where to begin. But if I could make myself achieve steady, daily goals, it becomes more reasonable.

So I created a Google spreadsheet, and in the spreadsheet, I made a Google Form that looks something like this:

The form will track my progress based on two metrics–time spent and actual output (the full form also tracks some other daily goals I have, but those aren’t relevant to this discussion). I will fill out the form each night before bed, reinforcing the expectation that I not only “do some work on my thesis”, but that I specifically put in a minimum of 3 hours and produce 5 pages.

I’m also using the Google Calendar’s reminder feature to create a daily event (I made a separate calendar so it doesn’t clutter my regular calendar) that emails me the link to the form every night. Since I basically operate out of Gmail, this is just another reminder for me to, at the very least, look at the form and be accountable to myself.

I think we’re all accountable in our best moments. The problem is our weakest moments. To help with that, I’m using my strong moments to create automated workflows that will fill in the lapses that fall in-between.

Kanye and Jay-Z slice some “H.A.M.”

Jason — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:39:56 +0000

Since the entire world apparently has an opinion on the new collaborative effort by Kanye and Jay-Z, “H.A.M”, which previews their album Watch the Throne due out in a few months, I thought I’d share mine as well.

Kanye’s trying to get bigger and bigger, but I think it’s about time he tried going smaller–the (melo)dramatic overtones are starting to become a bit much, and I don’t think his thematic material can keep up with his big head (which I was already worried about when his album came out last year). Jigga actually sounds pretty darn hard here, and I’m down with that: a grown-ass man gets to strut a bit from time to time.

Lex Luger’s production is okay. The ‘Ye influence makes it a little too schizophonic with the digital stuff alongside, but not really meshing with, the booming strings and voices. I would have preferred a little more griminess instead to match the verses.

All-in-all, I don’t think this is going to sway anybody or give any insight into what Watch the Throne will be like overall.

Schedule Gmail delivery with Boomerang (feat. my MCAT students)

Jason — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 04:52:53 +0000

So I’m trying to be more proactive with some of my MCAT students, getting them to make realistic, tangible goals that will drive them to succeed on the test and into their medical careers. (Folks who recognize my abilities of procrastination will find the fact that I am giving this advice greatly ironic and you are welcome to laugh at me.)

Anyway, I want them to (1) email me one tangible goal at the beginning of the week, and (2) reflect on that goal at the end of the week. However, if you know college students, that’s actually FOUR emails from me. The first one to tell them to send me the goal, the second to remind them about it, the third to tell them to send the reflection, and the fourth to remind them to send the reflection. I’m envisioning this as a weekly thing, so I don’t want to take out 4 times a week to remember to do that. But I can do it all at once by scheduling emails for the future!

* * *

I’m basically whored out to Google, for better or worse, so I needed to find a way for Gmail to do this, because it doesn’t schedule emails natively. Luckily, I’ve been playing around with a Gmail extension (Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome compatible) called Boomerang for the past month or so, and it works really well for what I need. It adds buttons to Gmail that allows Boomerang to send your email at a later, specified time. Security-wise, my understanding is that they don’t actually store the email, just the email header and subject line, so they can use Gmail’s API to send it on your behalf.

I’ve also been using it to send myself email reminders (which is probably better done through Google Calendar’s reminder system, but whatever). It also can remove an email from your Inbox for a specified amount of time (e.g. you get an email about your phone bill, but don’t need to see it for another three days). Really useful stuff.

Thanks: Inspiration for parts of this post come from Ramit Sethi at I Will Teach You To Be Rich for the advice on his blog about “automating positive scripts” and Techie Buzz‘s post on Boomerang from August 2010, “Schedule Emails in Gmail and De-clutter Your Inbox with Boomerang“. The former provided the strategic motivation, while the latter gave me the tools to make it happen for my students.

Clipperz and Other Password Management Options

Jason — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 04:26:43 +0000

If you’ve kept up with web news, then you might have heard about the hack of the Gawker website, which exposed a ton of user’s password information to unsavory elements. Such an isolated incident wouldn’t be a big deal–except people tend to use the same password everywhere. We’ve all done it. You might be using the same password for your sensitive email as your Facebook. It’s convenient, and with so many web services and applications to work with, it is impractical to have a unique one for each site. On top of that, those folks working on corporate or otherwise sensitive sites might be used to changing your password every month or so. How to be secure while not creating a hassle?

Clipperz seems to be a pretty good answer for me, and I’ve just spent a few hours today transferring to it from my previous strategy (a combination of the SuperGenPass bookmarklet and a great piece of software called KeePass). A quick word about those two before I move on (feel free to skip on to the main event though):

SuperGenPass: is a bookmarklet that generates a unique password with a basic algorithm: master password + domain name –> generated password. Example: I go to gmail.com, type my username and a master password, click the SuperGenPass bookmarklet and it replaces the master password with the generated password. Cool. The problem is that my employer asks me to periodically change my password, and SuperGenPass has no way to manage that. I could continuously think of new master passwords, but that defeats the purpose.
KeePass: A program that you install that basically holds all your passwords, encrypted by a single master password. There are some automation options in terms of browser auto-fills and whatnot, but the main weakness is that the database/program is either local or has to be carried around on a USB stick or something. I used it happily for years and it served me well, but it’s kinda clunky.

So enter Clipperz. It uses a pretty unique method of storing information that uses Javascript to the max. You see, they never transmit an unencrypted version of your passwords. Instead, they encrypt using a master password, then they store THAT. Decryption happens totally on YOUR side, maintaining security. (I’m totally having to stop myself from getting dorkier).

Click for full-sized screenshot

On top of that, the program has an awesome way of creating one-click links that allow you to automatically log into a site by clicking on a link within Clipperz. Also, because you don’t have to remember them, you can also make it auto-generate obscene passwords using numbers and symbols, making dictionary attacks difficult.

In short, it’s an online service, but helps ease my mind on the fact that it’s an online service by doing all of the heavy cryptography on the client side. All it does on the server side is store a bunch of encrypted data that can only be touched by somebody who knows both the username and master password (which needs to be strong, but that goes without saying). It also lets you download a read-only version of your password library for local use in case their site ever went down or something. Finally, there are extensions that integrate it with most major browsers. So again, check it out:

http://www.clipperz.com

Ultra-Thin laptop comparisons

Jason — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 23:38:49 +0000

Asus UL30A

Update 2010-12-27: Added optical drive comparison. Also listed a few other laptops that might be worth looking at, the Toshiba Portege line and the HP DM3T (neither added to the table though).

I’ve been thinking about buying a new ultra-thin laptop to replace my netbook (if I see a good deal I might do it soon, but I’m not in a rush). I love my Asus 1201HA netbook — for $400, I got a solid, lightweight machine that runs for 8 hours at a time — but ultimately, it’s still a netbook. Netbooks run on energy-efficient but slower processors (like the Intel Atom) and sometimes can’t handle the multi-tasking workload of the modern scholar (or the modern anything).

New netbooks (like Asus’ dual-Atom 1215 netbook) are doing way better, and straddle the line between netbooks and notebooks even more, but they are starting to converge with “ultrathin” laptops, so I’ve been looking in that direction instead. Why not go for a full Intel Dual Core or equivalent for a similar price?

The most famous ultrathin of the moment is Apple’s Macbook Air, but it’s pretty expensive. I’m including it in the table below for comparison purposes, but its price is a bit of a turnoff (starting at $1,299 for the 13inch), so what are the other options? I started to look for laptops with a few criteria important to me:

Ultra-thin w/ aluminum casing: Starting in mid-2009, cheap ultra-thins started appearing on the market, but folks quickly noticed that they were prone to cracking. I want something with an aluminum case like the Macbook Air, but still skinny and sexy. I know, I have a negative laptop body image.
Cheap (<$900): Since I got my first netbook, I’ve been working on a basic computer-purchasing paradigm: buy cheap laptops and replace them more often. It allows me to get the latest features, and gives me the opportunity to replace my computer every year or two without feeling bad about it. I don’t need to use my laptop for gaming, so if the most intensive thing I’m going to do is to watch a YouTube video in 1080p, then there’s absolutely no reason why I should pay more than this.
13inch or better screen: My netbook is 12inches, which is good enough, but I previously used 10inch and 11inch models and they drove me crazy. Too big and they start weighing a lot, too small and I can’t see. 13inches is a good median.
Decent Hardware: No less than an Intel Dual Core. At least 2Gb RAM.
Good Battery Life: At least 5 hour battery.

There are some things other people might think about too:

Optical Drives (CD/DVD): Honestly, I have little use for an optical drive in my daily work, and that list grows smaller when I think of things that USB flash drives could do faster and better, like transferring files. So I prefer no optical drive.

Based on that, here’s a comparison of the laptops I like the most + Macbook Air. It’ll probably be updated as I get closer to buying one. Each laptop has multiple options–I list the cheapest one that match my criteria.

	Dell Vostro V13	Dell Adamo 13	Asus UL30A-X7	MacBook Air
Price	$529	$899	$599 (on Buy.com)	$1299
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo 1.3GHz / 800Mhz FSB / 3MB cache	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.1GHz / 800Mhz FSB / 3MB cache	Core 2 Duo 1.30 GHz / 800Mhz FSB	1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 6MB on-chip shared L2 cache
Memory	2GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz	4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 800MHz	4GB of DDR3	2GB memory
Graphics	Integrated Intel® 4500MHD GMA	Integrated Intel GS45 GMA	Intel GMA 4500MHD	NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics

Operating System	Windows 7 Professional 32bit	Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit	Windows 7 Home Premium	Mac OS X

Screen	13.3 inch Wide Display HD (1366 x 768) with Anti-glare	13.4 inch display (1366×768)	13.3″ HD LED Display	13.3 inch display
Optical Drive	no	no	no	no
Thickness	0.65inch	0.65inch	0.97inch	0.76in
Weight	3.5lbs	3.97lbs	3.31lbs	2.9lbs
Battery Life	6-cell, 4-5 hours	6-cell, 5hrs+	12hrs	50-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery, 7hrs+

At this point, kinda looks like the Asus is winning, eh? I’ll probably update as I make a decision. This should help folks start to decide though.

P.S. In my continuing research, there are a few more models that I haven’t had a chance to add, but people might be interested in looking at: HP DM3T and the Toshiba Portege series. I’ll add them if I get a chance.