Month: May 2010

Mike Konczal has mixed feelings about online education:

I think you will see state governments embrace online education. But I don't see them passing on any of those savings on to the students, in the same way that the savings on replacing teachers with adjuncts was captured entirely by the university. A university now envisions itself as a profit-maximizing firm instead of a "public option" of college education. And given that education is our society's only chosen form of social mobility, if only middle-class people can afford college, then only middle-class people are eligible for the benefits of the 21st-century economy.

In fact, online education could fit right into the transition to the hybrid university where it's public in name (and subsidies) but private in terms of tuition.

Jason Kottke has a revelation:

FreshDirect is an online grocery store that delivers in the NYC area. I needed to do an order this morning, so I downloaded their iPhone app on my iPad and discovered that grocery shopping is one of those things that the iPad is *perfect* for (an it would be more perfect with a native iPad app). You just take the thing into the kitchen with you, rummage through the cabinets & fridge, and add what you need to your FD shopping cart. Then you take the it with you around the rest of the house (the bathroom, the garage, the pantry in the basement) adding needed supplies as you go. It inverts the usual "wander around the grocery store searching for items" shopping practice; instead you wander about the house looking for what you need.

(Image: The first customer in the shop, Kazuki Miura (R), receives his iPad from fashion model, singer and actress Lena Fujii (L), as they start to go on sale at the shop of Japanese internet service provider Softbank, Apple's exclusive partner in Japan, in central Tokyo on May 28, 2010. Apple's much-hyped iPad went on sale in a swathe of countries from Australia and Japan to Europe at the start of a global rollout tipped to change the face of computing. By Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images.)

Olivia Judson marvels at synthetic biology:

What I love about this is that the process of inventing a new genetic language will help us to understand more about the one that actually evolved. Indeed, this has already begun. Early attempts to manufacture DNA alternatives quickly revealed that the “bannisters” of the double helix — the chains that run down the outside of the molecule — are more essential to how the molecule works than anyone had thought.

There are many ways we could use designer organisms, some good and some bad. But the most fundamental aspect of the enterprise is that by trying to build life, we gain a more profound understanding of its evolved nature.

Morgantown, West Virginia, 9.30 am

A reader writes:

How much do I love this blog? Incisive examination of pressing issues and considered, sideways musings about pig nipples, all on the same page.

Another writes:

ENOUGH with the FUCKING pig already!!

To Weigel. Money quote:

By being here I have learned things, and I've gotten an insight into her character, into her ability to incite hatred, that before I only knew about in the abstract.

A reader after my own heart writes:

Six years ago I got into a heated argument with a group of Iowan evangelicals who were, like me, visiting Northern Ireland (Cushendall, to be precise).  Having just graduated from an extremely lefty college with a literature degree, flush with Guinness, and being a burgeoning anti-theist to boot, I got into a spirited debate with them over the use of irony in Frost's poetry.  They insisted that I was "thinking too much" about the poem and that I needed to "read it from the heart."  Then they formed a prayer circle and asked that I be forgiven for my sins (they didn't enumerate my sins, but I'm guessing hubris and intoxication were among them).  No joke.

In my years back home in the American South, I have grown increasingly unsurprised at the tendency of evangelicals, nativists, and "true patriots," to read Frost in an unserious manner.  We need not make a conclusion if the poem is definitely of the opinion that walls separate neighbors or instead create useful boundaries.  At the very least, it is a poem that begs us to question the premise — something which Palin et al. clearly don't understand.  Much like a kitschy framed needlepoint "I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference," a superficial reading of Frost may seem nice — but it is still kitschy.  Nothing in "The Road Not Taken" actually allows us to determine which road is, in fact, the one less traveled by, or whether the difference made was a positive one or not.  It simply says that we make choices not knowing the future, must make our own decisions, and we cannot know what the alternate future could have been.  It is a short poem, easily read as a statement of individuality and independence, but it is fraught with doubt and possible regret.

Mending wall is hardly even ironic on it's face.  Most of the poem is devoted to questioning the premise — without it the poem wouldn't be anything other than that one line, "Good fences make good neighbors." There is nature that does not love a wall, the neighbor who "will not go behind his father's saying," and the narrator, who says:

"Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 

If I could put a notion in his head: 

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it 

Where there are cows? 

But here there are no cows. 

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 

What I was walling in or walling out, 

And to whom I was like to give offence. 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 

That wants it down.'"

What is difficult about this?  We don't have to say that Frost or the poem takes a definite stance on the value of a wall, fine — but it is obviously at least about the separations that walls make between relationships, and at least questions the common wisdom of "good fences make good neighbors."  It is clearly not a poem that is just about how good fences make good neighbors.  Much like the rest of the Christianist mindset, simple and superficial readings of layered meaning prevail.  A poem can be simply wrought while not being simple, and that is one of the things that makes Frost's work so beautiful.  It's their loss if they choose not to appreciate this, but wholly unsurprising — it is a reflection of how they engage everything about the world.

Joel Wing worries about the plight of Iraqi refugees and the displaced:

Although accurate numbers are hard to come by approximately 2/3 of Iraq’s refugees and displaced are still without their homes. Although the process of return has begun, it has happened at an up and down pace. Those that come back still face difficulties, and the government, United Nations, and NGOs do not have the capabilities to adequately assist them. This has led some to speculate that the majority of Iraq’s refugees and many displaced that left their provinces may never come back.

That means the Iraqi government, aid agencies, and the international community needs to come up with a comprehensive campaign to deal with this large population. The displaced need to get more assistance, and be integrated into their new provinces or countries. The problem is that planning is often shortsighted, and lacks adequate funding because Iraq is a fading issue for many in the world. If things don’t change, Iraqis could become the new Palestinians without the media attention, causing social, political, and economic problems in their host countries, and within Iraq itself.