As you may should have noticed, the good old PragId has a new masthead. I think that this is the last part of my crazy plan to "redo" the image of this here blog.
The photo is taken by Adrian Kinloch. Adrian is an amazing photographer and designer (he is what I wished I could have been in architecture school). And, beyond that, he has a really cool blog, Brit in Brooklyn, which has photographs that capture the essence of living in Brooklyn. In order to do Adrian full credit, I have pasted a larger scale image; but it is well worth viewing the full size image. Adrian was kind enough to let me use the image here.
For those of you who may ask, the photo is of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower in Brooklyn. The restaurant no longer stands as it was an inconvenience on the way to Bruce Ratner's Brooklyn land grab. Beyond the formal qualities of the photograph (the use of the figurative foreground against the strong negative space and the "pop" of the color in the bell tower against the background of the blue sky - yeah, that's right, I studied art history and architecture), I also love this image for what it stands for. You will notice that the top of the tower (specifically, the part that actually contains the clock of said "clock tower") is still shrouded behind construction fencing. I say "still" because the developer told people that it would be completed by July 4th -- but now that date is "until the fall sometime". The photograph preserves the image of the JRG restaurant which was sadly demolished in the pursuit of profits for Ratner & Co. (see Adrian's picture of the site now) . I think that, more than any single photograph I have seen (or any piece of art, for that matter), it tells the narrative of the worst kind of urban development.
Alright - I don't know what is up with the world today that my daily reads include such weird and crazy things. Most mornings, my reads include things like the latest shady thing that Bruce Ratner has done and debates about higher ed policies, yet it seems like today is full of really crazy shit. First, there is the hipster video and now there is this (via).
First, I find it hard to believe this:
Why do we love books so much? Perhaps it's the smell.In a survey of 600 college students 43% identified smell –- either new book smell or old -- as the thing they most love about books as physical objects.
I can think of one of two things. First, the survey was designed in such a flawed manner (it was conducted by Zogby after all, no need to flay that dead horse) that they asked dumb questions. I mean, I might "miss" the smell of traditional books, but you know what I would miss more -- being able to fit it in my backpack so that I could reference it during class. Or, I might miss the fact that my backpack doesn't weigh six to eight extra pounds because I have to lug my laptop everywhere. Or, maybe I miss being able to take notes in the book while I read. But, I guess I just "don't understand kids these days." The second thought that I have is that smell is just one of the many things that people rank highly and Cafe Scribe just wants to make headlines (it worked) by instituting this, which is—by far—the weirdest part of this:
In an attempt to win over skeptical college students, CaféScribe.com today announced plans to launch the world's first smelly e-book. CaféScribe.com CEO Bryce Johnson says that beginning in the back-to-school month of September the company will send every e-textbook purchaser a scratch & sniff sticker with a certifiably musty “old book” smell.
“Students who use CaféScribe download our software to read and annotate e-textbooks and other documents on their laptops,” explains Johnson. “By placing these stickers on their computers they can give their e-books the same musty book smell they know and love from used textbooks – without any of the residual DNA you sometimes find stuck to the pages of used textbooks.”
3 in 10 of the surveyed students associated “mustiness” with the books they most loved, although 16% -- possibly those most likely to hit the books early in the day – associated best-loved books with the smell of “freshly-ground coffee.” Other smells mostly failed to bring books to mind, although respondents were more likely to associate pleasant smells (cut grass, freshly baked bread, cookies baking) with books than unpleasant ones (sweat, mildew, grease).
Am I missing something? Am I the only one that finds the smell the last thing that I miss about books?
Once again, you will notice my prolonged absence from teh internets. Luckily, this time it was self-imposed as E. was back in town for the weekend. She has been temporarily reassigned to live in Las Vegas for the month (alright, not really "reassigned" but it sure as hell feels that way) and was here this weekend. Although we maintained her Pacific timezone sleeping schedule, it was nice to actually be in the same place again. Damn, and we thought we had already put in our time doing it last year. Alas, like all good things, it came to an end and E. is now sleeping in Vegas and I am in the Big Apple...
My opinions on the viability of any social movement or organization that expects total dedication and cares so little about the quality of life of its members (paid or not) aside, it has been a frustrating experience overall. On the one hand, I have been busy with ASA and got to have three really good friends stay over. On the other, I moved to NYC to be with E. and it is frustrating that she was informed that she would be leaving across the country for a month. My one hope is that I can actually use this time productively in order to get things accomplished, like "finishing" one paper and getting another project moving.
But, just for the record, I want to say: this sucks.
I am having all kinds of problems with my internet connection today. I called Time Warner and, after getting caught in automated menu hell ("If you would like service, please say 'service'" ["Service"] "Thank you. You chose service. Would you like to find out information about your service" ["YES!!!"] "Okay, then. Are you having a problem with your cable. If so, say 'cable'. If you are having a problem with your internet connection, say 'internet connection'. ["Internet Connection"] "Good. Now, would you like service, if so say 'service.'" - You get the idea].
But, I never realized how much I relied on the internet connection. Part of it is that many of my files are on the internet. This is obviously a problem and something that I got myself into by placing them on the internet. Given my need to be mobile, and often using several different computers, it is still - even with temporary service discontinuities - the best bet. But, what is even more frustrating is that I don't feel like I can do anything until I figure out how to get back onto the internet reliably. It is like realizing that you don't have your keys before leaving the house. You could take the spare set, but you really don't want to leave until you find your set of keys because, well, you want to know where they are. Of course, then you are probably late and/or frazzled by the time you get to wherever it was that you were going when you realized that you lost your keys.
Anyway, that is going to be my excuse for getting nothing done today... Maybe it will start working soon and I can actually get something done before the end of the day.
This past week has been super crazy. I was attending the American Sociological Association annual meetings (which have received extensive coverage at Inside Higher Ed this week). This largely meant catching up with friends and going out to LOTS of meals and coffees, etc. Having felt very out of place at other conferences I have gone to in the past, the combination of moving away from Ann Arbor and having friends who have jobs and are no longer at Michigan made me realize that the real value of these meetings is being able to catch up with old friends. The combination of catching up with old friends and having the ability to commute to the meetings made this one especially enjoyable, but I can see how they will be great in the future as well.
Not all of this was non-academic thrills. I got to see several presentations that were excellent. Probably the most helpful was one where several journal editors provided tips to help get manuscripts published. For those who are interested, an excellent low-down is provided by anomie. It was really helpful thinking about how the actual nuts-and-bolts of this profession work. I also went to a really interesting session on urban sociology that included a paper about bars and nightlife in the Lower East Side. I decided after that talk that I really screwed up trying to develop my "project" (a.k.a. the dissertation - but somehow I heard a lot of people call it that this weekend) and should have come up with something that would allow me to go out to bars and qualify it as research. The paper was actually really interesting and relates to a more quantitative project that we were looking at possibly doing, so that was pretty cool. The other papers in the session were also interesting.
Since I have been so absent, I need to get my nose to the proverbial grindstone. But, since Dave and I were discussing the Columbia expansion project, I thought that I would pass this article about the project. Following the links provides a really good picture of what is happening regarding the "Manhattanville" or "West Harlem" project (depending on whether you would like to side with the University or with the Community). It was an interesting read regarding the role of universities in their communities, especially when those communities tend to be more poor, less white and have less political power than the university administrations.
Although this might be too late to even matter, given our obsession with only covering the news that happened in the last thirty seconds, but I thought I would take a tiny bit of time to write my postmortem on the debate Tuesday night. I know, there was already another one last night; but, all told, I think that it might help me as much as inform you on what I think about the election and the state of politics in this country.
Let me start -- since this appears to be the custom -- by declaring the "winner" to be Dennis Kucinich. I put "winner" in quotes because I think that this is the thing that disturbs me the most about the political class in this country. Politics among the main-stream media is a game. And, for all of their chatter and objections to the MSM, many of the larger blogs are, in fact, guilty of the same thing. There are notable exceptions in both the main-stream media and the blogosphere, but, by-and-large this is still the modus operandi of the political class.
I know that this is not the first political discussion where this has been the case - in fact I wrote an angry letter to Wolf Blitzer after Al Sharpton's Democratic Convention speech in 2004 about the fact that the only thing that Blitzer saw fit to discuss was how far over time Sharpton went and whether this would be an embarrassment to the Democratic Party (which, of course, was not only morally and professionally corrupt, but idiotic. The DLC crowd, already too frightened of Sharpton to begin with, already banished Sharpton to the 4:00pm time slot meaning that Sharpton going over by ten minutes didn't matter. Yet, this was too nuanced of a point for Blitzer and he proved too stupid to pick up on). But, I guess this seemingly laborious tangent gets at my larger point which is this:
No Politics (capital "P") is ever going to create the change that we need without the politics (little "p") to support it.
In other words, candidates pander to this kind of media attention horse-race Politics as if it were the run up to the World Series because rich and/or powerful people see this as a giant game in which, if they are players, they will look brilliant (and, as no small benefit, gain power and/or money themselves). I know, this is not a big shock and seemingly nothing that hasn't been said before. Wow, so powerful people corrupt politics against the interest of most of the population. Call the newswires!
It is not, for me, that this is a point that hasn't been made; but, for me this debate actually showed the potential of another kind of politics that sits outside of media punditocracy. Candidates were forced to interact with (gasp!) a crowd. And, yes, it was raucous. Why was it raucous and why did they not heed Olbermann's pleas to be quiet? Because every single one of the members of that crowd was there to help them make an excruciatingly important choice: Who do I want to be my next President? Who am I going to support by going and knocking on doors (because, let's face it, that is what all of the candidates want, even though, to quote Bill Richardson, all will "continue to take labor's money")? People should be engaged for that decision - it is more scary how passionate most people are.
Olbermann realized this and stopped trying to get them to be quiet. Kucinich realized this and played to the crowd. Clinton tried as best as she could to get into it, but was obviously uncomfortable. Obama has gotten too used to talks in punditry and has lost his community organizing sense. The DLC attack dogs (a.k.a. Dodd and Biden) were too busy attacking Obama and Edwards so that Clinton could look above the fray. And, despite what my esteemed colleague thinks, Richardson didn't make any sense to me (though, apparently, he did much worse last night). And Edwards...John, John, John... No one is there to listen to how you walked the picket line 200 times or have hob-nobbed with labor federation presidents. First, if anyone in that stadium has walked off the job, they have probably walked their own picket line over 200 times. You don't earn credit by walking picket lines X number of times - because you are in a stadium full of people who have done it more. And, second, while you are pandering to the correct people who actually make the endorsements, I would guess that a significant majority of rank-and-file members have a profound distrust for their leadership (and, speaking as a former local president, it is good to have mistrust in one's leaders - they should have to earn it).
So, my horse-race odds casting, though I hate it is as follows. Clinton got out of there unscathed (helped by the fact that there was mysteriously no question about her union-busting lead advisor), Obama looked good, but didn't win much particularly since he was in his home state. Kucinich was the man and Edwards lost, I think, all hope of breaking into the top two. There, I did it.
But, the bigger point that I think that the Democrats can learn from this is the potential power of the crowd. That debate was fun - people cheered, they booed, they waved behind the camera. That is America. Those are the people who give the President their job. I thought that the Democrats lost a huge opportunity during the 2006 State of the Union address. Tim Kaine had just gotten elected governor in a reddish state, the feeling was jubilant, the base was mobilized and people were beginning to realize that the President was out of touch. Bush hardly mentioned New Orleans only four months after the Hurricane and saw fit to talk more about human-animal hybrids. Tim Kaine could have delivered an address "in front of the American people" by giving a public speech to his new constituents in Virginia. And, the symbolism is so stark that even the punditocracy wouldn't miss it - there would be President Bush giving his speech to Congress the ultimate "insider's" venue while the Democratic rebuttal was given to a slice of the American people. The applause wouldn't be staged; no endless sitting and standing, this side clapping, that side sitting on their hands all following the lead of the Majority and Minority Leaders. No, real live people deciding when they would applaud and boo.
But, as long as Clinton and Obama look to get out unscathed, quite literally afraid of the unwashed masses, then progressive politics really have no chance. Despite what the DLC Democrats think, we aren't going to out fundraise or outspend Republicans, but we can, if we find leaders who can, connect with people. It is scary that a single candidate knew how to work that stage in the Democratic primary. And for it, he might have won my vote. Democrats should strategize that.
The photo is taken by Adrian Kinloch. Adrian is an amazing photographer and designer (he is what I wished I could have been in architecture school). And, beyond that, he has a really cool blog, Brit in Brooklyn, which has photographs that capture the essence of living in Brooklyn. In order to do Adrian full credit, I have pasted a larger scale image; but it is well worth viewing the full size image. Adrian was kind enough to let me use the image here. 
