Freedom of the Press is just too dangerous a concept in the Age of Terror, I guess.

So, the Department of Justice has been spying on journalists. They collected two months worth of communications for 20 phone lines used by Associated Press journalists. From what I've heard, it sounds as though they collected just about everything, including home, office and cell phones. Glenn Greenwald breaks it down in his usual incisive way. This isn't some paranoid conspiracy cooked up by Tea Party reactionaries. There is a clear admission from the DOJ that they feel free to spy on journalists as long as they can say it's in the interests of "National Security". And we are just supposed to trust them on that. Greenwald gives some background details:

Numerous media reports convincingly speculated that the DOJ's actions arise out of a 2012 AP article that contained leaked information about CIA activity in Yemen, and the DOJ is motivated, in part, by a desire to uncover the identity of AP's sources. That 2012 AP story revealed that the CIA was able to "thwart" a planned bombing by the al-Qaida "affiliate" in that country of a US jetliner. AP had learned of the CIA actions a week earlier but "agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish it immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way." AP revealed little that the US government itself was not planning to reveal and that would not have been obvious once the plot was successfully thwarted, as it explained in its story: "once those concerns were allayed, the AP decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday."

While they seem to have no qualms about trashing press freedoms, the DOJ did see fit to send a "just so you know" letter to the AP, though only after the fact. Freedom of speech and due process may be a luxury we can't afford in the era of TERROR, but it's reassuring to know that in the New Normal there is still room for bureaucratic due diligence.

When it comes to the consolidation of unaccountable Executive power, the Bush and Obama administrations have really pushed the envelope, always under the excuse of Terrorism. "Terrorism". One of those words whose meaning has been stretched, twisted and abused to the point that it has lost almost all meaning. It still proves useful for propaganda purposes, though, as an emotional-control trigger word, like "Drugs" or "Hacking".

This kind of authoritarian abuse only happens in China or Iraq, right? "Those poor people, they must wish they were Free like us," we think to ourselves with a sad shake of our heads before clicking over to TMZ.

It seems the DOJ wants to know who might have leaked information to the AP. After all, the Obama administration has been merciless in its pursuit of whistle blowers and leakers.  Except, that is, in the case of the "unnamed officials" who are sent to reliable contacts at the major new outlets to disseminate "leaked" information that is of political advantage to the White House. Sometimes that information may be ostensibly "classified", but hey, what's the big deal? Reporters love that kind of access, since it allows them to break big career-boosting stories. They advance their careers, the White House controls what information will inform the public narrative--everyone wins (except us)!

I wonder to what extent people are really aware of how far the lawlessness extends these days when it comes to spying conducted on Americans. I think many of us have a vague idea that the government and the private companies who collude with them have the capability to spy on us without much restraint or accountability. In response, many Americans seem to throw up their hands and decide not to care. They may have internalized such fallacies as "I'm not doing anything wrong, so this doesn't affect me", or "I don't want to speak up, I might get in trouble", or simply "I'm helpless, there's nothing I can do". This is exactly the kind of passive attitude those in power like their subjects to have. It keeps things running ever so smoothly. I may sound cynical, but as the DOJ's actions remind us, our government, like our financial system, is often run on a cynical basis. Words like "terror", "security", "patriotism" and "free markets" are little more than empty slogans serving to facilitate the exercise of concentrated political and economic power (including, of course, the power seize property, take away freedom, or to kill).

It seems to me that, when the people of a society become conscious of pervasive institutional cynicism, it's all too easy to adopt a cynical and pessimistic outlook of their own; to automatically disbelieve anything said by anyone in authority, and eventually to give up on civic engagement altogether. Unfortunately,  this retreat from the civic sphere facilitates even greater corruption and lack of accountability among political and economic elites, especially when it occurs in a climate of widespread scientific-, economic- and historical illiteracy. A deeply ingrained attitude of "individualism" such that "everyone is out for themselves/I don't need any help from anyone" also serves to amplify the fragmentation of the civic space. And consider how often we are served up stories about respected figures in the media or politics whose reputations become tarnished by some scandal or other, often involving private sexual matters or other manufactured things. Eliot Spitzer. Helen Thomas. Bill Clinton. It's almost as though we are supposed to think to ourselves, "You just can't put too much stock in any of them, they're all corrupt somehow."

To the extent that the preceding paragraph is true, there would seem to be little incentive on the part of elites in our society to stand in the way of this process. Quite the opposite, in fact. Of course not all political leaders are entirely cynical in the performance of their duties; but it does often seem that the few good apples are bobbing in the barrel among a whole lot of rotten ones.
 
"What's the point of voting, everyone knows they're all crooks..." 
"What do those scientists know? They're all in the pocket of Big Pharma, and science is just another religion, anyway..."
"Occupy Wall Street are a bunch of Hippies and Socialists! All I need is my AR-15 I bought at Walmart, so those jack-booted UN thugs better not come on my property!"

Having retreated from civic engagement, and likely having received most of their education by way of fictions disseminated through the mass media, people all too easily come to rely on priests, pundits, gurus and "angry male" father-surrogates to tell them what to think. Many of these "leaders" will seek to gain influence over their listeners by pandering to their fears and prejudices, thereby affording them access to the heightened state of outrage that they come to crave like a drug. A poor substitute for an engaged and informed citizenry, I think.

The War on Drugs was and continues to be the justifying framework for all kinds of rights abuses, usually administered in a racially and economically biased fashion. Rules are for keeping the little people in line, you see. Now that the cracks are finally starting to show in that bloated old edifice, here comes The War on Terror, or whatever it's being called now, just in the nick of time to takes Drugs' place. It's just the latest variation on a very old theme. The War on Drugs gave us those wonderful D.A.R.E. t-shirts. Maybe the War on Terror needs the same. Hmmm. Any suggestions?

Attention spinal sufferers! Back away from the scalpel!

According to The Guardian newspaper, scientists in Denmark have discovered that perhaps 40% of chronic lower back pain, a condition often treated with surgery, can instead be alleviated by a course of antibiotics. It seems that an infection process once considered rare is actually quite common.

To whit: an injured spinal disc can end up becoming infected by a certain kind of bacteria known to its friends as Propionibacterium acnes. Per the name, it normally causes acne, but it can get into the blood stream at times, such as through the gums. The body produces new blood vessels around the disc as part of the healing process, which ends up providing ingress to the bacteria. The result is inflammation and pain.

In a randomized trial, a 100 day antibiotic regimen reduced pain in 80% of patients who had suffered for more than six months and had signs of damaged vertebra under MRI scans. That's quite a lot of antibiotics...you might want to add some probiotic yogurt to your diet during the treatment period.

Frontline, the great PBS news documentary show, is running "The Retirement Gamble". I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in, and worried about, retirement savings and retirement funds.

Newsflash: The system is not set up for our benefit. Understanding how and why that is the case is the first step toward doing something about it.

You can view it here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement-gamble/

Thanks to the magic of public television, you can watch a number of other episodes, as well. All for free (though I hear WGBH appreciates donations!)

When that foot-in-the-door belongs to someone you know...

I'm listening to an NPR show, "Talk of the Nation". The guest, Nancy Ditomaso, is discussing a piece she wrote for the New York Times about how people find desirable jobs through social connections and networking, or suffer from lack of access to these resources. 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/how-social-networks-drive-black-unemployment/?hp

Ms. Ditomaso is speaking primarily in the context of black unemployment. Even with education and other earned indicators of merit, access to social networks matters a lot when it comes to getting a job, at least in the case of desirable, competitive ones. This is another area where inequality of opportunity persists, it would seem.

Networking is important for everyone, of course. This is part of why the "brand name" of an Ivy League is considered so valuable--it affords its "owners" access to exclusive networks and opportunities, in some cases anyway. 

According to Ditomaso, most people will say, "the connection just got me in the door, and then it was up to me to prove myself". This is very true, and I've said those words myself*. The problem lies in the failure to acknowledge that there were probably many others who could have "proven themselves" in that position, were they given the chance. The social network plays an important role in securing one's initial access to the hiring process, and also eases the way through to being hired. The foot in the door might not be your own, but instead belong to someone you know.

This being the Internet, it's important to mention that this isn't a dialectical argument. Merit still matters, and no one is claiming otherwise. But I think just about everyone knows, whether they'll admit it or not, that merit is only part of the story.

It seems there is an explanation to be found here for the resentment whites, lower-skilled in particular, tend to harbor toward affirmative action. Basically, it has tended to stymie the relatively more-privileged access to coveted "good jobs" which they enjoyed in the past by short-circuiting the advantages afforded by social connections, i.e. the "old boys network". Ironically, then, affirmative action can actually promote the very meritocratic conditions that its detractors claim it threatens. Big shocker, I know. I wonder if anyone has ever used the term "meritocratic relativism" to describe this particular attitude?

There's an interesting discussion to be had about the phenomenon of threatened privilege (racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious...) and the tendency of its sufferers to turn to reactionary political ideologies. Concentrated resentment can be quite flammable, both societally and sometimes literally. It can also be a powerful fuel for the boosting of political fortunes. This isn't anything particularly new, but for some reason this topic doesn't get much air time in the mass media. Not even on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, gosh darn it!

If you can get a hold of it, give the Times piece a read. Interesting stuff.

*It's funny...the way I got this job I have now, is Mom heard about it through a colleague of hers that worked here, and was looking to hire someone who knew certain languages. So I fit the bill, but the personal connection definitely played a role in both alerting me to the opening, and in easing the way once I applied.

National Poetry...

This is a bit overdue, seeing as April was National Poetry Month. I first posted it elsewhere a while back, and thought I'd put it here, too.

A Pseudo-Tanka, on the Occasion of National Poetry Month

Month of poetry
what a marvelous idea!

Concentrated dose,
then back to television
for the next eleven months!

Two notions that might have a story in 'em

I

"Artificial intelligence" and the limits of Personhood

"Persons" posess minds and in most cases, personalities. The “limitation” of a particular perspective, with a somewhat-clear delineation between self/psyche and “everything else” seems to me an essential quality of a recognizable personhood. A limitless (therefore formless), omnipotent/omniscient AI or Deity or whatever would be entirely different from a human mind. Would such a thing even have a recognizable mind or personality? Could it? A mind that truly encompassed the Universe might in fact be indistinguishable from it. Baruch Spinoza, among others, considered these issues centuries ago. Witness his “heretical” conception of an impersonal God, fascinatingly similar to ideas from the Vedantic Hindu tradition. Perhaps this suggests a basic limit  to how far humans can transform themselves without completely dissolving their existence as persons.

Even a “hive-mind” is a space-time limited construct and process, with a particular vantage point onto a larger reality. Perhaps it is more accurate to describe such a communal organism as representing an agglomeration of individual vantage-points, somehow unified into a higher- but still delimited- order of being.

Post-humans might assume many different forms; cybernetic, bizarrely biological, even grouped together in a Borg-like collective. But if they wished to preserve a distinct personal identity, they would still need to remain beings; embodied (virtually or physically) intelligences with idiosyncratic motivations and feelings about things. Non-human Artificial Intelligences would be created to carry out a particular function,  whereas persons would exist independently of any particular function. 

AI’s might emulate human psychology to a large degree, if it made interacting with them easier (human factors would be as much about mental architecture as about physical design, I imagine). But beyond the particular tasks to which these intelligent Artifacts were applied, would it be necessary or even desirable to imbue them with sentiments, dreams or subjective lives of any kind? Might they instead be motivated only to fulfill their designed purpose and have no inner psychological life beyond that? This would be a sort of complex-yet-mindless intelligence, insect-like. 

Perhaps these Artifacts would develop greater awareness over time, if they were allowed to “mutate” their own mind-programming. But the inclusion of such a mutation-capability might be just as likely, if not more so, to create inefficiencies and performance-deficits and thus be undesirable.

How to create, instead of a clever Artifact, a fully formed “person”, a being for which it is “like” something to be them, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Nagel. This might turn out to require a deliberate effort, rather than being something that is likely to spontaneously arise. What if sentience (as opposed to just intelligence) is about more than just increased speed and complexity? What if it entails the creation of a system with the right kind of complexity--though I don’t know what that would mean in practice. I don’t think anyone does, yet.

What if a stable “embodiment” turns out to be a vital component of any recognizable individual identity? That is not to say that the “embodiment” need be physical in the human sense. Consider Agent Smith from The Matrix. He is a being of pure software, but within his world he inhabits a body, with a defined, unique point of view, and from which he interacts with the perceived “external” reality of the Matrix. He develops emotions, motivations, and an individual awareness, which allows him to "unplug" himself and exist as an independent entity (thus also becoming the antithesis to Neo, who also becomes fully self-aware by unplugging himself from an imposed reality). Even when Agent Smith replicates himself into an army of clones, there is a sense in which they are all “him” and yet each is still a particular, delineated, embodied self-awareness. When in the later films he seeks to enter the “real” world, he must first find a way to imprint the informational patterns that make up his mind into a host body, which then becomes his new embodiment in the outer world.  

Time may ultimately bring answers to some of these questions, but in the meantime it’s a lot of fun to ask them, and in doing so to challenge some of the long established science-fiction tropes around AI and post-humanism.  

II

Magic

The other day I was listening to a radio interview of a history professor, Brian Levack, who has written a book about the history of belief in demonic possession, “The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West.” Strangely, though maybe not surprisingly, many of the callers were more interested in discussing their belief in the actual reality of the demons, themselves. To many of them, illness, misfortune, rebellious teenagers, and of course mental illness were all explainable as manifestations of literal demonic possession. It was as though someone had invented a time-telephone and sent it back in time 400 years to take calls.

At the same time, I have been reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Thematically it shares a bit with Harry Potter, in that it's set in modern times and involves a school of magic hidden from the mundane world with its sleeping masses. Otherwise it is quite different in tone, and is completely distinct from J.K. Rowling's world. And it got me thinking.

There have been many discussions about scientific proof or lack thereof with respect to paranormal phenomena. Ritualistic and mythological metaphors are integral to all societies. Many of us though, continue our wishful fixation on excessively literal interpretations of these mythic elements while neglecting the underlying socio-cultural and psychological factors that would help us understand their value in its full cultural context. At the same time “modern” world continues to misunderstand psychological phenomena, often misinterpreting them as evidence of the supernatural or of psychic abilities.

Though the evidence is shaky at best, perhaps there are as-yet unexplained metaphysical forces at work in the universe, beyond the purely subjective realm of the mind. If so, their effects seem to be marginal, highly ambiguous and unreliable. There are always intriguing anecdotes to be found which hint at something more, while rarely offering much which falls outside the realm of alternate explanations.

I think even if there were to be discovered strong evidence of extrasensory abilities or invisible beings made of something other than matter, it would point to a new and fascinating unexplored territory within the natural universe. I strongly doubt on the other hand that such a discovery would lend credence to fundamentalist notions of a supernatural, demon-haunted world based on projections of human fears and folk-beliefs about how to ameliorate the viscissitudes of life. Or at least I sure hope not.  

Imagine, however, a parallel world where things had developed differently. What if early scientists and mathematicians had begun applying their Enlightenment methods to subjects like demonology, astrology and ESP, and had found compelling evidence of some actual effect, alongside their discoveries in chemistry, astronomy, physics, anatomy and so on? After all, there was a time when subjects like chemistry, electricity, mesmerism, radiation and so on seemed so strange as to be magical. What if, as with the spooky but somewhat inexplicable observations of quantum effects, there were equally compelling and inexplicable observations of “magical” effects? What if these effects existed alongside, though obviously somehow separate from, the so-called Laws of Nature? What if the study of these anomalies became a field of serious scholarly study all its own? What if scientists gathered magical lore from around the world in order to study and systematize it, in the same way ethno-botanists gather data on medicinal plants and other organisms whose active ingredients may inspire new classes of pharmaceuticals? What if “magic” was explored and applied like a branch of mathematics, information theory, neuropsychology, linguistics?

Even if a fundamental physical understanding of observed magical effects were lacking, the principles derived from their systematic study could still be applied to create predictable and useful effects (as is often the case with scientific discoveries put to practical use). We know that certain drugs work, and that certain physical priniciples hold true, through observation, study, and replication. We may not fully understand how they work, but we can still reliably make use of them. In a world where magic was a real, reliably documented and applicable physical manifestation of some higher priniciple of the natural universe, the process would be no different. The notion of an "applied science of Magic" might be a fully accepted one.

Sassy black men. You Tube auto-tuned. Laughing at? Laughing with?

This was written in response to a short article on NPR (appended below) about the “instant celebrity” surrounding Charles Ramsey. You may recall he was the gentleman who helped free three young Cleveland women who were being held captive in a house owned by three bloated, sweaty older gentlemen who probably shouldn’t have been let out into the world unsupervised. 

The point of the article was to highlight this and other cases where “sassy black men” from poor areas have gained accidental notoriety by being articulate and outspoken on camera. The article asks an an important question, namely, is there an element of condescension in our reaction to these people? Are we “laughing with them, or at them?” One of the other examples of this phenomenon cited in the article was Antoine Dodson (of “hide your kids, hide your wife” You Tube fame). Having actually met Mr. Dodson, in passing, and therefore feeling confident in my ability to speak authoritatively on this matter (this being the Internet and all) I had just a couple thoughts to contribute.

I met Antoine Dodson at an Internet Meme convention (ROFLcon) at MIT last summer. He was a funny guy. I do remember wondering at the time about the same questions raised in this piece.

When Mr. Dodson was "discovered" on line, auto-tuned, and eventually feted by tech-startup Ivy League grads, was there a measure of patronization in his notoriety as "that sassy outspoken black guy from the projects?" It seems a valid concern given the obvious disparities in wealth, race and social class between the parties involved. But we shouldn't discount the fact that he was also an articulate and funny story-teller with genuine appeal--a bit of a natural stand-up comic.

At any rate, he seems to have turned this unexpected windfall to his own advantage. So perhaps it's too simplistic to see his relationship with internet fame as a matter of pure "exploitation", or at least as exploitation flowing in only one direction.

I think many Americans from all walks of life are pretty savvy about how this aspect of the media works, whether or not they've ever taken a class on Internet Studies. I hope that, instead of just being relegated to the role of unsophisticated "victim", he can use his unexpected celebrity to improve his and his family's situation while avoiding the pitfalls of instant fame. This is more or less what most of the other "Internet Meme" folks were happily doing, it seemed to me. Who knows, maybe Charles Ramsey will be able to do the same thing, in his own way. As George Herbert, author of the science fiction classic Dune, said in his 17th century classic Jacula Internetum,

"living well is the best revenge".

Find the original NPR piece below:

Are We Laughing With Charles Ramsey?

Gene Demby May 7, 2013

Charles Ramsey talks to media Tuesday as people congratulate him for having helped some women get out of a Cleveland home. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight and a 6-year-old girl were rescued from the house. (The Plain Dealer/Landov)

It's hard out here for a black man the Internet accidentally thrusts into the limelight. Those 15 minutes ain't no joke.

Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland man who helped Amanda Berry escape from her captor and free her fellow captives, is already a full-fledged Thing On The Internet, primarily owing to a live local television news interview. During that interview, Ramsey proved himself a fantastic storyteller, and he kept it extra-extra-real.

What made Ramsey really blow up on the Internet was his observation at the end of the interview.

"Bro, I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms," Ramsey told a local TV reporter. The local reporter quickly pivoted away.

(He's not lying: Cleveland is one of the 10 most segregated cities in the U.S., according to a study from two researchers.)

Like Ted Williams, the homeless "man with the golden voice," Antoine Dodson of "Hide Your Kids, Hide Your Wife!" fame, and Sweet Brown of "Oh, Lordy, there's a fire!" — three other poor black folks who became unlikely Internet celebrities in recent years — Ramsey seemed at ease in front of the camera. And of course, he's already been Auto-Tuned.

Very quickly, they went from individuals who lived on America's margins to embodying a weird, new kind of fame. Williams ended up being offered work doing voiceovers for radio. Dodson leveraged his newfound notoriety to get his family out of the projects. (Our colleagues at Tell Me More sat down with Dodson a little while back to talk about blowing up and moving out of the 'hood.)

This new notoriety mimics the old, familiar trajectory of celebrity. We start to learn all sorts of things about these regular people that "complicates" them. Their foibles become part of the story. Williams' history of drug abuse and petty crime quickly came to the fore; he would go on to appear on Dr. Phil to talk about his estrangement from his family. Dodson would later land in the news for run-ins with the law for drug possession. (Just this week, Dodson announced that he was joining a nationalist religious order called the Black Hebrew Israelites and renouncing his homosexuality.)

But race and class seemed to be central to the celebrity of all these people. They were poor. They were black. Their hair was kind of a mess. And they were unashamed. That's still weird and chuckle-worthy.

On the face of it, the memes, the Auto-Tune remixes and the laughing seem purely celebratory. But what feels like celebration can also carry with it the undertone of condescension. Amid the hood backdrop — the gnarled teeth, the dirty white tee, the slang, the shout-out to McDonald's — we miss the fact that Charles Ramsey is perfectly lucid and intelligent.

"I have a feeling half the ppl who say 'Oooh I love watching him on the internet!' would turn away if they saw him on the street," the writer Sarah Kendzior tweeted.

Dodson and Brown and Ramsey are all up in our GIFs and all over the blogosphere because they're not the type of people we're used to seeing or hearing on our TVs. They're actually not the type of people we're used to seeing or hearing at all, which might explain why we get so silly when they make one of their infrequent forays into our national consciousness.

Copyright 2013 National Public Radio (Source).