--->>>Welcome to the Crossfire<<<---

All My Familiarity Are Belong to 2004

2008-11-20T07:25:00.000-08:00

2004 was the year I most remember laced with good stuff happening. Maybe the last time my soc relations were all fluid and interconnected via spontaneous phenomena.

-I was still at Santa Cruz with the Company, Dima Dims, DSL, Wach, 'Well,

-College 10 trashtalking at the dining table

-Hip-hop dancing girl and the accompanying Dirty Dancing Represent CUBA remix that she choreographed to

-Michelle Branch's Game of Love with Santana is just a fun song

-Madden 2004 and NFL Street 1

-Parties where I played DJ on a computer, downloaded, and bumped Zion I

-Intro to the Narratives of Popular Culture, the Anthropology of Religion

Damn, I like all of my life that has happened but this time in particular is my favorite to bring up and blow up to anyone who wants to read about my interpersonal connections.

A New Blog I've Added and My New Career Interest

2008-10-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

http://losangelespublicspace.blogspot.com/

I started a new blog about Los Angeles and open spaces in it. The inspiration for the name comes from an organization that organizes public lectures in LA, Zocalo. Their tag line is "to provide a welcoming, inclusive space in a city with too few welcoming spaces." Mish mash that with the existence of Skid Row just a few blocks from a revivalist downtown and Mike Davis' city of Quartz and voila, Los Angeles Public Space at http://losangelespublicspace.blogspot.com.

I've been talking about the walkability of things, free events, and Watts. I talk about everything possible in the public realm but only from a perspective I'm comfortable with. I know some of what's going on, but I won't pretend to be an expert with years of experience. For now, I'm just the man on the sidewalk.

That said, the introduction of the blog, and the ease with which I write on, kinda helped me realize my professional and career interests.

This will be my professional shpiel, and I am now practicing it.

I've decided mentally officially that I want to be a Cognitive Anthropologist with a focus on urban settings. It's my way of bridging my interest in urban planning and psychological anthropology and the possible subfield of "neuroanthropology."

Specifically, I am interested in memory as expressed in the public and social realm. I'm curious about what people remember about events, and how they use that recall to formulate...something I developed from years of Chicago Bulls basketball message board reading.

I have had the luxury of having a well-developed and active message board community.
Sure there are fans from other teams, but this is a community of namely Bulls fans, and virtually all of the fighting and conflict stems from within the Bulls fan commmunity.

The conflict stems from certain decisions made by management. There are factions that support management decisions, others that don't. There are factions of fans that support players over others, there are factions that dislike certain players ON THE TEAM.

There may not always be news regarding the team, but there is definitely a community that stays active even when there is no action. It can be seen in the number of Off-topic (OT) threads that are started, specifically during the offseason.

I think these factions represent a community and the individuals/actors within them reflect real world politics and beliefs. Those beliefs are all but embedded in the language they use. Sometimes they reflect hidden racist attitudes, or liberalist viewpoints. Having spent years on these message boards with the same characters, I could sort of anticipate whose going to comment on what, and how they're going to respond to a certain situation.

One thing I've been struck by on these message boards in relation to memory is that fans don't usually remember a lot of facts or details when they argue about the value of players. No one can recall the details to every game ever played, not even self-professed fanatics. Recalling those details turns out not to be important in that most people never seem to reference them again. The reality of the message board is not so much to make published, lasting statements, but for fluid human-like conversation. Most people operate on a type of working memory that does not lead them to progress in their understanding of the different players and team.

Instead, the fans who rely on that working memory and fluid-conversation seem to be stuck and glued to their modes of thought. As the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis postulates, language creates thought. I think those who use working memory more often are likely not to take in and fully register the new language/discourse expressed upon understanding players. Without taking in that language, they aren't likely to make new distinctions or give meaning to new distinctions and nuances. They aren't likely to be detailed, but not taking in the discourse allows them to reproduce their statements and in turn inflate more meaning into their repeated discourse.

I think this kind of interest has implications for understanding the political mind, how people make decisions, and other such fields as marketing, psychology, etc.

On a more personal note, I don't want to do this just because it's my interest, but also because I want to show that Filipinos, minorities, people of color can be influential and do other things, specifically in academia and where the knowledges are created. I want to show that my race and ethnicity, the hip-hop I rock, the language we use is not stupid, we won't be fooled, and we can make things happen.

The Concept of Poverty: Abstractions and Voids

2008-10-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

...Has driven my political and spiritual leanings since high school.

Maybe it was also my mom's do-gooderness, my high school's "Man for Others" philosophy (a Catholic school near downtown Los Angeles), but I just couldn't imagine why this wasn't a big deal for people or people in power. I couldn't imagine why poverty, homelessness was not that big a deal. It was like people didn't know it existed, when it was right there.

Downtown Los Angeles, around my school, and just about anywhere we went, there were people panhandling. And after a while, it's normal to build an immunity to giving any change at all to anyone.

Every Thanksgiving or Christmas season, I've imagined myself without the luxuries that I have and still do enjoy. I find myself asking the internal ego: what would I be without my education, my computers, my parents? How would I deal with the battle for food from the garbage? How would I walk 6 miles a day to fetch clean water?

When I say I "imagined myself", I actually can't, so the best I could do is sit on my thumbs and feel bad. Or sometimes go down to Skid Row. Or sometimes offer change to a homeless guy. Pretty randomly distributing my funds at that, sometimes not at all depending on my mood and the context.

What do I know about poverty, other than I don't want it to happen to others, I feel bad for people who can be considered in it, and I do not want it to happen to me?

I was an AmeriCorps VISTA in orientation when we had this discussion about the concept of poverty.

Poverty is in my estimation a combination of not having resources, not having support systems, and not enough money. It's a socally determined condition, which means it was created by us, which in theory means it could be resolved by us.

Historically located, the concept seems to be one outcome of the field of statistics.

Poverty the concept is a tool that serves as a reminder for the local, state, national, and global level that there are a chunk of people who do not have resources. It's a tool that helps us think about social ecology. It brings us awareness via numbers that people are not doing well.

To the casual observer, they are people who try to make the ends meet, as if they were trying to bend a steel bar to meet one end to another. They are people who do not have means, which means in this society that they lack money. Consequently, with a lack of money, they do not speak a language of repetitive acquistion that can connect us from "us" to "them".

There's a scene in Rush Hour 2 where Chris Tucker's police character is in Hong Kong in a taxi. Chris Tucker orders the driver to follow a limo, but the driver apparently doesn't speak any English. In a hurry to follow a car, Chris drops a bunch of cash on the driver, to which the taxi driver replies in English "Now You're speaking my language."

In a somewhat similar, yet less humorous way, without speaking that language of money, people described in a state of poverty easily become demarcated as a group. They are a group unlike the rest of "us", but they become "them." As them, seperate from us, "they" can become objects, rather than the part of "us" who are subjects, people like us, people we can relate to.

They are to be studied up, labeled as if to be filed away like information, and accordingly stereotyped.

Or they in poverty become entirely invisible.

I've spent a lot of time in South Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, and Downtown Los Angeles. I can't believe that it's still Los Angeles I'm in. It definitely isn't the Los Angeles you see in popular tv unless you're watching one of Boyz N the Hood or Cheech and Chong or Born and Raised in East LA. Stars like to shine their spotlights to their causes, but not over here.

Poverty is an abstraction to describe people who have voids. People who are void of resources, people, and currency.

The people with those physical voids become voids themselves within the larger community. Voids meaning invisible dark holes. In popular discourse, they are rendered virtually invisible and non-existant, perhaps only there on occasion for a celebrity's opportunistic photo op, or as community service projects for high school students, dissertations for researchers, or even objects for me to write about. As these voids, they are particularly vulnerable to be used as tools, objects for other people to use.

When we don't ask these broke folks about their stories, people presuppose and make up stories about why they don't have money or why they become "voids" can easily be rationalized away.

Money is supposed to signify work done. If you don't work, you don't get money. This quickly becomes a moral slippery slope of reductionism, which presupposes that there is always work available, which might be true in theory, but doesn't explain why the unemployment rate is at 6.1% and why California has seen its rate shoot up its highest since 1996.

Ironically when they aren't being ignored, they become the convenient target for blame. "They" eat up resources in the form of "handouts". They sit on welfare, they have too many kids, they take up too much space. They are dead weight.

To the blunting of their humanness, their emotional developments, their stories, their intelligences.

I'm curious as to what these people are not as objects of inquiry, but as subjects. As people with their own stories of human life with language, codes, humors, and intelligence.

Story Continues...

Mr. Tony Ilao, Man This Is For You

2008-10-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

Man, life is way too short to deal with BS.

Anthony, if you ever read this, man, this is for you too, man.

We just moved out of Silver Lake to Panorama City only a few weeks ago. The man was sick, and we weren't supposed to make too much noise. We lived next door, but we also lived upstairs.

The last time I remember seeing him and interacting with him was when they got TFC. The Filipino Channel. He was crazy excited, I could feel, and I wouldn't get in his way.

It was slightly annoying whenever he'd asked me if I was moving our car on Saturday or Sunday mornings or street cleaning days. It meant that he was just going to take my parking space and I'd have to stay out of the house until the late afternoon. Fucking hipsters and street cleaning days.

But, the man, was a good man. Mr. Ilao was a good man, or at least a good memory for me in Silver Lake.

He was always by his red Chevy van, cigarette in mouth, whether in a pair of shorts or his security guard uniform. When Anthony was heading out to the Navy, he proudly slapped on the back window of that red van a bumper sticker "Proud Parent of a Sailor."

He offered me advice on where I should upkeep my car. He'd ask me if I was going "jogging," I guess he knew that I was participating in the marathon. He'd always tell Mercy to keep quiet when she kept barking at me. This past Christmas I remember him grilling chicken and offered it to us. Best fuckin' chicken I had that Christmas.

Well, I hope you've got all the Filipino Channel you could handle up there.

Unconsciousness, Consciousness, Popular Discourse, Race, and the Presidential Election

2008-10-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

When I think of the word "consciousness", I think of Mos Def's line in his Close to the Edge Freestyle on the Chappelle Show.

So, stop with the nonsense, like he conscious
I'm just awake dawg, I'm doin' great dawg

He was talking about "conscious", meaning a state of knowing what's going on. He says being conscious is not really a state worthy of praise or congratulated for; it's just him simply being awake. By implication, this means he's noticing things.

Consciousness, specifically human consciousness was the main topic in the book the User Illusion by Tor Norretander.

The main thing I got from the book was that 80% of what we do is done unconsciously. Breathing, heart rate, thoughts, especially during sleep. Unconscious. We can sense a billion things a minute, but only a few bits actually enter our stream of thought and movement called our "consciousness."

I'm inclined to say that consciousness is about maintaining and exacting control. Consciousness acts so you don't go crazy processing every bit of information. It acts as yet another filter of information for the world around you.

It simplifies your life, your thought, emotion, movement process, the way that the User Interface on your computer simplifies your life as a computer user. You don't have to enter code just to do anything. You can click on your My Computer icon, the start button, which is nice, but there's so much work involved in making it look that easy. The binary coding, the programming language, the time it took to develop all that. That's all hidden.

Consciousness like that user interface that hides a lot of those details like the binary code and the programming language.

One thing I notice is that what you do become conscious of, you're probably insecure about. Which brings me to self-consciousness.

I'm conscious right now about my math abilities.

Kanye West says he's so self-conscious, but he's the only one to admit it.

It's a bad thing in this socio-cultural milieu to be "self-conscious" because it means you're too worried about what people think. You don't act the way you want to because you're trying to control what people think about you. Or at least limit the bad thoughts.

When you become conscious, it seems like you don't really do anything, but you observe. The "I" part of you becomes active, but you cannot envision that "I" part of you committing to an action.

Basketball players, soccer players are said to be unconscious when they're making quick decisions with their respective balls. In those contexts, where timing is of the essence, you're not supposed to think, you're supposed to act. There is no room for pondering. There is no room for the "I" to perceive, and then decide to act because the moment is already over. Hesitation usually doesn't mean anything good in sports. The solution is to act before you think. Acting unconsciously.

Essentially, the book by Norretander is about how happiness tends to happen more when we are unconsciously acting. Unconsciousness means we act rather than let the consciousness creep in and instill doubt.

Then I thought back to what Mos Def said about consciousness.

So, stop with the nonsense, like he conscious
I'm just awake dawg, I'm doin' great dawg

Even outside of Mos Def's context, we use "consciousness" a lot in youth hip-hop culture here in the US of A to indicate someone who seems to be thoughtful and knows about harsh realities. As opposed to someone who isn't conscious. By implication, a person who isn't conscious isn't thoughtful and skips over harsh realities.

There is even a demarcation of "conscious" hip-hop and non-conscious hip-hop. "Conscious hip-hop" is hip-hop that invokes thoughtfulness and harsh realities.

There seems to be a parallel between consciousness and harsh realities. Consciousness seems to recognize "harsh realities" all the time. With its recognition of harsh realities, it notices limitations as well. Consciousness by proxy notices limitations.

Consciousness. Realities. Limitations. Consciousness knows realities and knows limitations.

Acting unconsciously. Happiness. When you act unconsciously, you're generally happier.

Notice that we don't really care whether or not Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, or Paris Hilton are "conscious." I rarely hear that word used in any Hollywood Infotainment show. "Conscious."

It's probably because there's a kind of happy and upbeat discourse always surrounding them, regardless of what they actually are feeling. They live in an unconscious world where each of their missteps are exposed and judged harshly, yet anything positive they do, including losing 0.5 lbs of weight, is celebrated as an achievement. With the worlds they live in, they can fuck up royally,

When explaining why people are addicted to gossip about Hollywood celebrities, Danielle Fishel, formerly of Boy Meets World and apparently now a gossip host, said something to the effect of: "it's fun to follow their stories because their worlds are limitless." Limitless. Boundless. Unconscious. By implication, they have choices and can act on any whim, which makes their story more intriguing.

They get to act as unconsciously as they want.

Now that's something I wish I could do as a middle-class Filipino kid in America. I'm happy, but it feels like I have to walk on eggshells still. I have to carefully be something. I mean I wish I could just act ridiculous and stupid and then somehow bullshit my way into popularity. Or even something like the US presidency.

Only it feels like I can't. It feels like I can't just walk into a job interview and chum it up with old whitey. No matter the qualifications or knowledge I have, I have to match an employer's "comfortability, fit" factor (or maybe that was just me). The employer is usually somebody white. It feels like I can't just be an Eric Kandel from Vienna who studies literature and history as an undergrad, becomes a psychiatrist in training, and becomes a Noble Prize winning neuroscientists. My point is that it seems like everyone's doing something unconsciously, except me.

I'm just sitting here consciously, and observing.

Now this brings me to a question of whether or not I could act unconsciously on my way into something like the US Presidency?

Would I as a Filipino middle-class kid be able to George W. Bush/Sarah Palin my way through anything en route to the presidency?

It feels like I have to do everything by the book while other people, namely the white folks and asskissers of color get by on a steady diet of bullshit. I feel like I've had to do things at a higher and tighter level, so good just to get something that white people could get with just a minimum of effort.

The same I could say about Barack Obama.

Community organizer from the creme-de-la-creme, professor, organizer, awesome communicator matching up against an old guy who is respectable but is probably going to continue the Bush push, and some lady who came out of nowhere and prides herself on being a hockey mom.

It feels like this presidential "race" shouldn't even be a competition anymore. However, the polls are closee. He still seems to be walking on eggshells and is perpetually in doubt over the Bubba votes and the Bradley effect.

He's still defending against so many things: Reverend Wright, the unfettered linking of his middle name to Saddam's last name, the claims against his links to Islam.

All of these things shouldn't be issues, but have been made so, and he's had to straddle the line delicately to appease voters.

I think it took a lot of consciousness to play his positions the way he has. I do believe in his commitment to ALL working class folks. I really doubt he actually likes to support Israel, that he's actually steadfastly Christian, or that he's all for some kind of border security. Those seems like things in his form, his identity, that he consciously changed to make him palatable to broader demographics.

Not saying that's wrong, but that's how you win in politics --- more form than function. The right form to carry out the function. With the right form, the collective feels that it can unconsciously carry on with their functions.

Ben Gordon, His Contract Negotiations, and the Bulls

2008-10-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

I wish John Paxson would've read a bit of Sherlock Holmes before he became GM of the Bulls.

A man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with scuh furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it...It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless fact elbowing out the useful ones.

Except John Paxson didn't crowd the Bulls with knowledge. He crowded them with overrated and overpaid players.

Kirk Hinrich, an unimpressive point guard, got an average of 9.5 million over 6 years to overdribble, complain on defense, choke in the clutch, and back-up Derrick Rose.

Ben Wallace got 14 million per year to deteriorate and watch other centers and power forwards grab rebounds. Ben Wallace's deterioration begat the 13 million dollar albatross that is Larry Hughes, whose seen better days, particularly those days when there wasn't a website dedicated to him telling him not to shoot so much.

Luol Deng is the latest to benefit from Paxson's fool strategy. He got 12 million per year, to stay injured and to perform his disappearing act when it matters.

Kirk Hinrich, Larry Hughes, Luol Deng. They will make 31 million out of the 54 million under this year's salary cap. With the on/off Nocioni, that's 39 million invested in 4 players: a player who should've been traded, a player we traded for because of a bad signing, a bad signing, and Andres Nocioni.

In contrast, the San Antonio Spurs, a real franchise, invested 41 million dollars in 3 years, but in players who are actually the team's main producers: Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili.

In Paxson's mistake-accumulating frenzy, he crowded out one of the team's main producers since 04-05. None other than the leading scorer over the past 3 years, Ben Gordon.

Despite his status as the clearcut #1 option on the offense, he wasn't going to be paid even Kirk Hinrich money, let alone Luol Deng money.

After a long and drawn out negotiating period, Ben Gordon signed the 1-year qualifying offer for 6.4 million dollars. The consensus is now that he is good as gone after that 1 year. After this one year, he becomes an unrestricted free agent, meaning he could sign anywhere and the Bulls would be left with nothng to show for the 3rd pick in the 2004 draft.

Yes, he comes off the bench, and yes he was leading scorer for a losing team.

However, bench scoring is one of the few things going for us, ever, and he was leading scorer for a 41 win team, and a 49 win team as well.

I've followed this team since the first Bush was still in office. I was the jump-rope monitor for my class. I've since advanced to playground monitor.

I didn't even know who Ben Gordon was out of college. I wouldn't care too much about him if he didn't help the Bulls shoot themselves out of the pile of dung they were in.

I simply recognize a good, winning product when I see it. Ben Gordon is exactly that.

Unfortunately, the Bulls wouldn't know. If anyone has inclinations of using any variation of the phrase, "wouldn't know [insert item of curiosity here, in this case for the Chicago Bulls, WINNING PLAYERS/DIFFERENCE MAKERS] if it was biting them in the ass", the Chicago Bulls are a good modern-day point of reference.

He was a huge reason we even had a resurgence in 04-05. We were supposed to be monumentally bad and supposed to continue in that direction. Luol Deng was the first guy I noticed, I thought he was a star, after a Lakers game, but we still lost. I lost all hope in the season after watching us muff a Clippers game.

Then out of nowhere we won a game in Utah.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/recap?gid=2004112426

It was cute. The rookie was doing something we could've had Jamal Crawford done. Nice!

We then won against the Lakers at home.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/recap?gid=2004120104

I thought that this Ben Gordon guy might be worth something after all, but it would be impossible for this team to do anything else.

He solidified his status as 4th quarter magic in 2 games against the Knicks. By the time he was done, he was a league-wide sensation and the Bulls were suddenly out of the worst 6 year funk in pro team sports history. He had 20 games where he had 10 points or more in the 4th quarter. He was a reason that announcers talked about clutch statistics. 6th man of the year as a rookie.

However, that was probably a curse in disguise for the perception of his game.

Scott Skiles pigeonholed him as being effective only as a 6th man.

For the better part of 3 years, Gordon would have to fight for his playing time, let alone starting time in ways most star scorers would never have to. In 06-07, despite being a league top 20 scorer at 21.4 points per game, he averaged the least minutes (33), and scored at the rate of and more than Amare Stoudamire, a guy who operates in the post.

However, instead of giving this leading scorer, this guy who's helped to re-energize your franchise more room to grow even more, Scott Skiles seemed to punish Gordon. Particularly in 05-06, BG was subject to benchings for in-game defensive lapses and turnovers. Skiles jerked him on and off the bench, starting each season with Gordon as a starter, before relegating him, and subsequently reinstating him.

At work in Skiles' mercurial management of Gordon was the principle of "the more things change, the more they stay the same." As in as they kept trying to change BG's role and his minutes around, the more his status to the team, his reputation stayed the same, the perception of his improvement stayed the same.

The league-wide expectation is that if you are a bench player, your ultimate goal is to become a starter.

However, the line fed to us by the Skiles regime was that Gordon was our very special bench player, not the traditional bench player who stunk, but the one who gave us a boost from the bench. Bench scoring, tops in the league, thanks in no small part to Ben Gordon.

But still even with Skiles' explanation, casual fans and media pundits alike completely missed that point this summer when analyzing Gordon's situation.

They missed that point when they were calling him simply a bench player, who was fair value worth no more than 8-9 million dollars a year. They missed that when they de-valued his contribution as the leading scorer.

Bench players in the NBA tend to get conflated into one category. Not good enough to play unless you are Manu Ginobili and Leandro Barbosa, players on the bench on winning teams. If you're not on a winning team, bench players are players of excess. Ben Gordon is a bench player. Ben Gordon is of excess.

The other argument was against his ability as a #1 option. He was "only" a leading scorer has also been used against him. It's implied that playing offense on a losing team means you're not that good on offense, that you're shooting and chucking because no one else will.

That mode of NBA trend generalization doesn't jibe well with the reality that Gordon's effective FG percentage was well over 50%, meaning he wasn't just randomly shooting and wasn't inefficient.

Despite all the herking and jerking of his playing time, and an everchanging role as defined by an idiotic coach, BG has still been the player whom most fans anticipated to "heat up." "Heat up" as in hit shots. "Hit shots" to actually win the basketball game. No one on this team would have expectation of Hinrich, Luol Deng, or Andres Nocioni to "get hot." There is no Hinrich time, or Luol time. It's Gordon everyone expects to salvage a game.

Gordon heat up in a 19-2 run scoring 16 in the 4th quarter against Indiana.

This was a game in which we were down 19 with 6 minutes to go. If we didn't win this game, we might have not made the playoffs. If we didn't win that game

A few games later, he heat up against the Wizards. He shot 9 for 9 behind the 3-point line. This was the game that sealed our entrance into the playoffs.

Perhaps this 6th man heating up and leading the team in scoring is not such a trivial attribute after all. It might actually be useful, particularly if we were interested at all in winning any championships.

Self-Diagnosed and Induced Dyscalculia: My Math Experience and Its Relation to Working Memory

2008-09-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

In my first two years of high school, math was one of my best classes. I did well in Algebra I that I got into Honors Geometry. From Honors Geometry, I did well enough to progress into Honors Algebra II.

Honors Algebra II...where fecal matter made contact with the fan, and my confidence in my math skills evaporated like a fart in the wind.

Mind you, when I took my SATs the following year, I still got the same exact low score on verbal as I did my math, but given my scores in SAT II subject tests, I figured I was just headed for a life without math. Plus, I didn't want to start behind in college, at precalculus, so I just thought I'd avoid it altogether.

Thanks to a vague "quantitative" requirement at UC-Santa Cruz, in which I would be able to use introductory science classes to satisfy the requirement, I was able to slip by my classes without doing much math.

Six years on, two years out of college, staring down options for graduate school, I am still wondering when I am going to take the GRE and/or the CBEST.

At the center of this standardized test hold-up: my fear of my performing poorly in the maths sections. A paralyzing dual fear of 1) forgotten methods and even scarier, 2) miscalculations.

I am now studying all that math that I forgot.

I tried re-doing math when I transferred to LA by re-doing precalculus, but I was practically run over by the speed at which we went through material and it felt like I never had a solid foot on just what the hell was going on. I probably forgot what to do which was one thing, but another thing was simple miscalculation --- getting things wrong in simple division, subtraction, addition, and multiplication, which I shouldn't have!

In just one moment of failure in math, in high school, I atrophied almost a life-time of accumulated skills.

Nowadays, when I look at even just the idea of rational numbers, everything seems very rote. "Rote" as in unbelievably dull, disparate, disconnected, meaningless. I could throw numbers around and not care. Numbers and signs are symbols of an arduous, painful journey upon which I eventually need to take steps.

I might've been keen just continuing what I was doing, but, I've had an education in deconstruction that has taken me in a 270 degree turn almost back to where I was as a math student. Almost.

Numbers in themselves are not 'bad' or 'good.' It is merely a language that communicates trust. Trust across different academic disciplines, communicating trust from government to person, from media or business to consumer. The key is that numbers are merely language. Language is merely a tool for expressing thought. Using math is a tool for expressing thought, but in terms of quantification and precision. It expresses a discreet, definite answer to a societally important question of 'how much.'

In a highly-interconnected society with lots of buildings, roads, people, and objects, but apparently not enough time, space, and/or resources, the question of "how much" is now that much more important.

However, just because its that much more important and perhaps has increased its utility doesn't necessarily mean people want to or actually do learn that language.

I had been wondering why this language of math suddenly became so daunting for me.

One clue from my heightened love for languages and neurosciences:

Dyscalculia arises because a person cannot develop adequate representations of how many things there are.

http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2006/03/060320221545.htm

So the inverse logic is that perhaps I probably have lost an adequate representation of how many things there actually were: I let numbers become too generalized so that they lost their adequate representation. Subsequently, all numbers, notations, and symbols somehow all became similar, particularly when I arrived at answers. I was neglecting negative signs, forgetting to add, subtract, multiply, divide.

Why did numbers become so "generalized?"

Perhaps because I started putting concepts in my own terms.

I had learned in my high school psychology class the next year about alternative memory methods. By this time I figured I was heading into the social sciences and humanities, so I focused on just remembering everything in psychology or history. To remember all of what I was learning, I was trying to make the subject material more relevant to me. I was putting concepts in my own terms, making ideas teachers presented to me, relevant to my own experiences.

I was trying to metaphor-ize social science and history subjects to things in my daily life.

Metaphors are imperfect tools of language which seeks to underline and understand similarity. It seeks to understand relationships. The similarities are almost always arbitrary, but it makes it easy to remember because I see their connection to things that I've experienced. The new concept simply adds to that experience. Metaphors are about understanding relationships between things.

When doing my social science thing, I don't necessarily accept terms used to describe things as they appear to be. In fact, I fight a lot of them, because I don't think people like being reduced. I don't think I'd ever call anyone an "illegal immigrant" lest we call everyone in the United States.

Why do we label in the first place? We do it to make fast manipulations when making fast decisions --- a survival mechanism. It's a tool to help us model just what the hell is immediately happening around us.

Conversely, math is about manipulating or changing relationships, and it depends heavily on acknowledging labels in the first place. Labels, symbols, notations. -4 + 5 is different from 4 + 5. You have to acknowledge that '-' before the 4, which is exactly the kind of thing I was forgetting in my GRE test exams.

How to manipulate and change relationships and acknowledge those relationships?

Ostensibly, it seems to depend on developing visuo-spatial ability. Rubik's cube people, chess players are said to have a visuo-spatial abilities, which they can co-opt to their advantage. Einstein's brain was said to be 15% larger in the part of the brain that deals with these abilities. He was said to "think in pictures."

Surprisingly or not, video game playing improves visuo-spatial skills.

That Causes Some People To Be Lousy In Math. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 20, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2006/03/060320221545.htm

Filipino American. Heterosexual. Masculinity. Los Angeles. Indian Game Show.

2008-09-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

With the UCLA Bruins temporarily, literally, figuratively not existing, at least till next Saturday, there's been a serious void in my Saturday afternoon.

How did I spend it?

Reading the RealGM Chicago Bulls message boards running across enlightened political discussion, watching this video on the moments immediately before John McCain popped the question to Sarah Palin, and a video of an Indian man slapping a woman reality TV show host...

...as below:

The clip is from an Indian reality tv show called Dadagiri, or "bully." The premise of the show is that contestants "beat the bullies", enduring emotional torture from four different bullies as if they were in high school. The four different bullies berate them through each and every challenge.

The one woman in the show, Esha the Goddess, perhaps in character or not (she carries a whip around), slaps the contestant. Without blinking, the contestant retaliates with a more forceful slap of his own. He's immediately separated by some of the people, crying out "How can she slap? How can she slap?" as a group of people proceed to stomp him.

At first, I didn't understand its appeal as comedic relief or internet sensation.

All I know is that I felt really bad for the man because I had read this piece of information from the RealGM Bulls basketball boards:

This is a Indian reality show where they degrade folks who are generally lower-class. The winnings are Rs. 50,000 or about $1250. Not a lot, even when compared to Indian economical standards.

Oh, and the mob at the end... That happens a lot in India. If you do something wrong, the public will beat you up. I saw a car driver get beat-up almost to near-death for striking a bicyclist. And of-course since the mob all work for the reality show, they were biased against the contestant.

So I looked at this clip from this perspective: here was a man enduring emotional torture, being stripped of his dignity, all for a few peanuts of money, while the bourgeosie classes got their entertainment, and laughter.

Incidentally, research has established that emotional pain is generally found to be more damaging than physical pain.

My reaction shifted as I watched more of the clip and read more of the story.

The events preceding the slap was particularly of interest.

What was actually steering my interest forward were the comments people were leaving on the different youtube video iterations of the same clip.

I was expecting racist comments along the lines of "what a weak-ass Indian guy" (and of course there were some, most of them here), but instead I was treated to a plethora of "yeah, she got what she deserved", to put it mildly.

Only when she is on her knees with her lips around your cock! This leads me to question Gender Equality. Seriously, hitting/beating women is wrong, no doubt about it! But when that bitch decided to slap him, she was not prepared for what she recieved. And what did she recieve? Gender Equality in the form of a slap! Women want gender equality, they can have it, just be prepared to accept the consequences!

If you think it's alright to hit a guy but you think it's wrong for a guy to retaliate than you are against equal rights.

There's a kitchen and you're not in it.

Return to your position.

maybe she needs to be put into forced labour camp so that she can slowly become humble.

and perhaps a serious spanking in bed until her ass is swollen and she begs for mercy..

should of knocked that bitch out and gang raped her.

I hope all men would have the balls to slap any cunt back just like that guy. I hope Indian television never allows her to work again. Sorry cunt back to the whore house you go..

should have pulled out a mascheti and carved her like a peace of meat, the stupid slut.

slut bitch.. she should be raped. props to dude who mashed her face up

fucking bitch i would cut her tits off with a cheese grater

The thing that was interesting was the performance of masculinity in and people's understanding of equal rights.

"You want gender equality? Well, here it is!"

Yes, I guess that's correct, but the show is about being able to withstand emotional and a certain amount of physical torment (I don't think he signed up to be actually beaten to a pulp by a mob, though). My understanding is that the show presents itself as this bully show, so contestants would at least expect a fair amount of beating from a show that calls itself the "meanest show on television." The contestant is a guy who signed up for something. Maybe she was thinking it was part of her role as this whip-carrying dominatrix-like figure and that she was immune to harm because she assumed the guy would take it as part of the show.

How would I have reacted? Being a lower-class person, being called "stupid", "gay", the prospect of not getting much money even if I do win, getting beaten up by a gang of dudes that you know you could take on one-on-one, I'm not sure.

Surely, I still felt bad for the man and the beating he took afterwards.

But with the rash of user-generated comments, I also started feeling for the woman, not because of what she did to incite it, but people's reminding her of her place in the world as a woman. Lots of people with nothing better to do than react back with youtube threats of sexual violence and brute violence.

I was also struck at the number of times I saw her called ho, slut, whore, bitch, cunt. I'm struck at how many times people talked about fucking her, even raping her. I'm struck at how easy it is to throw around, yet still weighs heavy on women.

Yes, it's youtube commentary and there is a distance between saying something anonymously on the internet and actually doing and advocating for something, and as long as that boundary is observed, it's OK but that boundary does get crossed. On one hand the video and its commentary space is a good place for people to vent what they normally wouldn't say, and subsequently for people to mediate, but then on the other hand, maybe for someone else it feeds an ambiguous desire to make such a thing happen.

I would never advocate for the shutting down of the video or its trailing commentaries, but I'm not fond of the user-generated commentary/discourse on the count of immature comments. The video is a utility, a piece of equipment, a tool...something that people can manipulate as they please to converge with their world views.

Things probably would be "boring" if everyone made sober commentaries. However, since I have a platform on which to stand, which gives me a bit more responsibility, I'd use it to take the drunken discussions into some form of sobriety.

Language and the labels/categories we use play a role in determining how we think. The more we think of a label or category like "slut", "bitch", or "whore" and its associated meanings, the more that label or category and those meanings become they become realities...

And I'd rather not think of reality as that simple, nor as that throwaway.

Trouble the Water: New Orleans 3 Years after Hurricane Katrina

2008-09-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

3 years ago, I was entering my senior year of college, preparing for the year with my life-changing student organization. In my other ear, I was hearing all about the comments Kanye West made on national television.

A stuttered, nervous utterance of "George Bush doesn't like black people!"

A clip plaid ad nauseum on the news.

With the swiftness of a Usain Bolt millisecond, NBC's cameras cut away from him.

Sure I agreed with Kanye, and yes Hurricane Katrina was a tragedy.

But realistically I could not "feel" Katrina's impact on the city of New Orleans. Emphasis on the word "feel." I could not picture, imagine, grasp its impact on human lives. It was a disaster, and yeah, that's always bad, but disasters happen. "Disasters" are an inescapable part of life.

I didn't really feel the impact of Katrina on New Orleans' residents till I read Mike Davis' piece on the predators of New Orleans. "Predators" signifying those who almost willingly encouraged New Orleans to fall apart.

They wanted New Orleans to fall apart to shoot some more profits into big GOP donors, in the same way they used the war in Iraq to shoot profits to some more GOP donors.

Davis wrote a follow-up article on the lack of progress in New Orleans. The "lack of progress" meaning the dormancy of broken infrastructure, abandoned, un-fixed buildings, and outlying debris from Katrina, even a year after the flood.

In this environment of broken infrastructure and abandoned buildings, there has been an exacerbation of conditions:

...an upswing in killings,

...an upsurge in homelessness

Meanwhile...contributing to those problems, ordinary citizens in New Orleans, particularly the black ones without the political connections, the money, seem to be railroaded and shot down at every turn.

...demolitions of public, read affordable, housing...which would've cost less to repair than to demolish and rebuild.

Not surprisingly, some advocates of a whiter, safer city see a divine plan in Katrina. “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans,” a leading Louisiana Republican confined to Washington lobbyists. “We couldn’t do it, but God did” (13). Nagin boasted of his empty streets and ruined neighbourhoods: “This city is for the first time free of drugs and violence, and we intend to keep it that way.”

Privatized charter schooling...which fired every teacher in New Orleans schools.

While the new charter schools are better funded, they are allowed flexibility in "weeding out" certain students.

Apparently 32000 students have not returned to the New Orleans public school sytem.

Local Businesses being snubbed by the Small Business Administration and not allowed to re-build.

And while the citizens see their opportunities deteriorate...

Republican Campaign Contributors are getting rich off the contracts to "rebuild" New Orleans earning rich contracts.

FEMA, for example, has paid the Shaw Group $175 per square (100 square feet) to install tarps on storm-damaged roofs in New Orleans. Yet the actual installers earn as little as $2 per square, and the tarps are provided by FEMA. Similarly, the Army Corps pays prime contractors about $20 per cubic yard of storm debris removed, yet some bulldozer operators receive only $1. Every level of the contracting food chain, in other words, is grotesquely overfed except the bottom rung, where the actual work is carried out. While the Friends of Bush mine gold from the wreckage of New Orleans, many disappointed recovery workers--often Mexican or Salvadoran immigrants camped out in city parks and derelict shopping centers--can barely make ends meet.

The concept of making money off of disaster is what Mike Davis called "catastrophy capitalism." It is similar to what Naomi Klein describes as "disaster capitalism" in reference to US-waged war on Iraq: a war and disaster situation fabricated for profit-making purposes for campaign donors.

It was on this astonishing, yet not shocking neglect and exploitation of human needs that I hoped the movie/documentary Trouble the Water would further explore.

The most poignant line from this preview came from a woman who was reluctant to let her son fight in the army. She wouldn't let her son fight for a country that didn't care for him back.

That line,

...juxtaposed with the presenter's line that Katrina was a disaster turning into a tragedy...

....juxtaposed with the fact that some people who worked on Fahrenheit 9/11 worked on this film

...filled me with lots of expectations.

I came into that 12:00 PM showing on a Friday in Hollywood with the expectation that they would talk about and show the politics of New Orleans and its effect on schools, jobs, and life overall.

With those expectations, I was somewhat let down by the movie.

Turns out that the documentary was a mostly first-person narrative of what happened during and after New Orleans. Seems like they should've waited a bit to glean deeper storylines and interview outside of the main person and the main person's circle. Not bad and very important perspective, but I felt the producers could've done more with a platform affecting an entire city of people.

It's one thing for them to have a Katrina story through the eyes of one individual's experience. I think of Forrest Gump, Blair Witch, as popular examples of these individuals telling their own stories with their eyes.

Once they showed media coverage and footage aside than the subject's own, then the producers could have and should have invested some time outside the family talking to people outside of the narrative story. They could have talked to those people who were out on the Superdome days after Katrina. They could have talked to the people still in the neighborhood post-Katrina. They could have talked to the superintendents of the school systems. They could have talked to the guards who were still lurking Katrina and told a more complete and filling story.

I wanted them to have discussions about the institutional inequalities in New Orleans. I wanted them to go in-depth about the money that was made by these corporations. I wanted them to talk about the effects of the hyper-privatized school system. I wanted to see more of how other people lived after Katrina.

It's still a movie I recommend that people go out and see for both informational and holistic human-empowering reasons.

After 3 years New Orleans is stagnant in improvement, but nonetheless, an explosive environment in which to live.

The re-population numbers remain depressed and could remain that way after these battery of hurricanes and city-wide evacuations.

the Valassis data indicates New Orleans had 146,174 households receiving mail in June 2008, still down 28% from the 203,457 receiving mail in June 2005, two months before the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane and resulting flood.

A map of the repopulation of New Orleans via the Map Room

Despite the privatization of businesses and "economic development" thrown into New Orleans, incomes are sinking.

Fifty-three percent of low- income residents report that their financial situation is worse today than pre-Katrina.

Housing continues to become even more unaffordable...

Rents have raised by 46 percent citywide (much more in some neighborhoods)

All this while renters haven't received any financial assistance (in comparison to the 116,708 Homeowners who have) nor have their been any new apartments built to replace the public housing that was demolished.

There have been 10,000 houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina, and 12,000 homeless people in New Orleans, double pre-Katrina. And to top it off, housing law discrimination.

Public services continue to operate at a bare minimum...

City services remain very limited -- for example, only 21 percent of public transit buses are running.

The percentage of residents who say they have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness such as depression has tripled since 2006.">Fifty-three percent of low- income residents report that their financial situation is worse today than pre-Katrina. The percentage of residents who say they have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness such as depression has tripled since 2006.

I first thought the phrase "Trouble the Water" meant something dramatic and extreme. Something like "fire up a thunderstorm" and "make some noise." Yeah, trouble the water! Fire up a thunderstorm about New Orleans! Make yourself heard about Katrina! Yeah!

In actuality, the phrase from Afro-American Christian lore symolizes something more more serene and something quite antonymical to what I thought the phrase meant: God's healing. To "trouble the water" is essentially to give something healing properties.

It turns out the movie is about healing whatever's left of New Orleans.

However, one thing I don't understand is how one can "heal" if they keep getting plundered, depleted, whacked and broken.

Grand Theft Auto: The Great Public City via the Great Video Game

2008-08-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

Usually at this point in life, she would be thinking about internships, career development, boyfriends, and sex and the city.

Thank god that the former 2 things haven't been developed in her consciousness yet. I couldn't be happier.

At this point in her life, before she hits the 2nd decade of life in the Gregorian calendar, my sister decided that this would be the summer that she'd finish something she had always meant to finish.

Instead of a summer sitting down doing bitchwork or working at Jamba Juice, she'd steal what she needed to steal, she'd shoot at who she needed to shoot at, she'd take what she needed to take.

All so that Carl Johnson could reclaim the city of Los Santos.

Ironically, my kidly sister is playing a very adult-themed game.

When I was about 11, I had written in some Playstation game fair my idea of the best video game ever. My idea didn't necessarily mean violence, but I wanted a game that integrated elements of someone's life together. I wanted the person to be able to do a variety things rather than just fight, or just shoot or just play basketball, or just drive. I wanted to fight, shoot, play basketball, AND Drive within some kind of progressie storyline.

Enter the Grand Theft Auto series.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is the latest rendition and centers around a fictional character named Carl Johnson who's mission is to re-gain prominence on his city block. Its a game I bought because I kinda liked GTA 3. As this fictional character/protagonist, Carl Johnson or "CJ", your "job" is to work for a variety of bosses to progress through the game. Your means of accomplishing missions requires a deal of technical precision fighting, shooting, and driving. You can also simply choose NOT to progress through the game, but you won't be able to access the storyline.

The storyline is loosely based on the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, which was quite scary as an 8-year old. Should you choose to progress in the storyline, you will encounter a city-wide re-enactment of the Riots where everything is on fire, and no one is standing around.

I know that there's a new Grand Theft Auto for the Playstation 3, but I don't really care because I don't have one, and therefore that iteration doesn't exist.

There's a sense of Bladerunner-ish dystopia. It's a land where only the objectified, personality-less Other exists in abundance. It's a world of mysterious, fallen, and disparate adults.

Along with these themes of adulthood, personality-less, disparate Others, I noticed a few other things:

1) No one comes in pairs or groups. It is a world of wandering individuals. There are no families and no kids here unless they are on the satiric talk radio station. Only old men, prostitutes, ambiguous men, tough guys, big shots, prostitutes --- a world built by adults for adults.

People bunched together usually have guns and exist for the dual purposes of aiming poorly and shooting you.

2) Along that line of thinking there are no schools, social services with foundations and muckety muck dinners to infiltrate, playgrounds, no libraries, museums or places of cultural interaction.

3) With no groups of people together, there are no festivals or fairs happening as events in the game. Closest thing you get are street races.

4) It's very quiet in the game, unless you're attacking someone and they're screaming, you're in a fist/gunfight, and/or the police are chasing you.

5) Open and green spaces are places of no space or social interaction. There are no Madame Matisse Hipster joints or beer gardens or dog parks.

6) There are no other animals in the game, other than the humanoid ones. It would be cool if they added roaming cheetahs, monkeys, elephants, camels, deer, tigers, hawks, hippopatami in their next renditions of the game. However, if they added Ecco the dolphin, or Free Willy I'd return the game as soon as the discovery was made.

I wonder....what would PETA do (WWPD)?

7) There are no seasonal or long-term cyclical demarcations. Every day can differ from sunshine and rain, but it's generally all the same. There's no KOST Christmas songs despite the progression of days in the game. There ain't no Easter Bunny, unless in reference to some kind of joke.

8) Without any of these spontaneous things, there is no room for passive consumership. Everything has a purpose within the game whether its the video game arcade or your fashion sense adding to your sex appeal. My sister got really rich in the game, grabbing over 11 million dollars, but

9) There's the economic development maxim that cheap transportation equals economic activity.

Cheap, dispensible, transportation is the key to you making money. The jetpacks, the planes, the motorcycles, firetrucks, garbage trucks, taxis, ambulances, go-carts, the cars are the vehicles needed to help you complete most of your missions from which you earn your money.

This is all transportation that the protagonist takes all by himself. There are no passengers, except when he's stealing taxis or ambulances He's not waiting at a certain time for any subway or bus or train. He moves whenever he needs to move.

The highways, the lakes, the airport runways, the basic two-way streets, are the infrastructure you take. Oddly enough, construction is seen in the game, particularly when you are prevented from going to another city early in the game, but we don't really to get interact with infrastructural maintenance.

10) There are no banks to rob, surprisingly, but you can rob casinos!

11) There are no landfills, or prisons. There is no sense of waste as things simply disappear or are blown up. You don't destroy the green spaces by speeding on it at 90 mph.

12) It's a world of unlimited infinite supplies. You can always get guns. You don't have to gas up or maintain your car, unless you want to take it to the paint shop. There is room for water treatments plant, power plants, or gas stations. You can waste cars as needed, and people will keep buying them and putting them on the road no matter what! The sense of ecology is one where things don't really ever get destroyed, but they simply disappear, and re-appear as part of the mass produced generic products.

What prevents us from seeing all this stark human reality is the obvious cartoon-like feel to the game. The producers try to give an inverted or warped sense of reality from the different puns, metaphors, and commentaries. There are the obvious rip-offs of name brand clothing like Zip posing as an imitator brand for Gap or Caligula's Place as the mock hotel for the world famous Las Vegas hotel Caesar's Palace. There's the satiric societal commentaries on politics and mass media, progressive happenings in the game about drug use, capitalism, etc. You'd have to be a cynic or at least have some cynical sense to really relish and enjoy this game.

These add up to an overall sense of fragmentation in the city-state of San Andreas or the Grand Theft Auto series in general. It is this fragmentation and disconnection which the game exploits to provide a space for the gamer to do what they wouldn't do normally. Other than the people he meets in the mission storyline, CJ's sense of disconnection from people and place is what makes it acceptable to be killing random people, running over the different types of infrastructure. We don't know any of them, we don't know their stories, we aren't sensitized to them, so it's all OK. (However, you might be a little sensitized to that prostitute that you decide to take in your car for a few minutes and choose not to kill her.)

The lesson I take from the fragmented and disconnected virtual Grand Theft Auto city is that in our real cities, perhaps we'd do best to encourage ecological and personal connection. By connect, I usually imply a sense of "play."

One way to encourage a sense of play is in the physical public space along the lines of the Jane Jacobs school of thought. It's hook, line, and sinker within the ideas of walkable cities and taking back the streets. It's about making the streets places to be. It's about building a place where seemingly random connections are likely to be made, where people are not on guard.

One intriguing topic within this stream of thought is the playground within the public space.

Courtesy of Worldchanging.

Courtesy of Treehugger.

It strikes me that effective community-building things usually have an element of play within them. I touched on the Water Pump merry-go-round. Play has a certain randomosity to it, which enables you to make connections in concept and potentially to other people. How many times by instinct could you just kick that soccer ball that comes sailing towards you? Maybe you could've made a new friend?

The play-oriented city is the type that connects people more. The type where people simply seem to do things for no purpose other than fun and enjoyment. What was interesting in the video is that one group of people thought they would take a picture of the fun they were having. It's the kind of stuff that makes the space a place.

The Memory of Belmont Art Park, Belmont Station, Los Angeles Housing and Open Space Advocates: You Got Wurped.

2008-08-22T00:34:00.000-07:00

"Wurped" --- a term the author coined from a mis-hearing of the word "worked".

Author's Rendition of statement: "Bill Wennington got wurped"

Actual statement: "Bill Wennington got worked."

The etymology of the word stems from a shellacking the 1996-1997 Chicago Bulls took from the hometown Los Angeles Lakers team in the game of Professional Basketball. "Wurped" is merely a mispronunciation of the word "worked", however by mere fact of the aforementioned shellacking, combined with the author's inability to say anything in defense of the Chicago Bulls, "wurped" functions to intensify the sense of defeat, or loss (i.e. salt on the wound).

Four years ago there was a graffiti park called Belmont Art Park near downtown Los Angeles on 2nd Street and Glendale.

I first came across it during a Huell Howser special. The context was right in front of the downtown vista of buildings. It used to be the site of the transit station. I can't believe I'd never seen this place. Huell spent the program interviewing some Latinos in the park playing some kind of ball game from Mexico or whatever, overviewing the art, speaking to some kind of tour group, and interviewing the artists.

I checked it out one day, then another day, and then another day (which is not documented). First day was when there were people playing that ball game I saw in Huell Howzer. Second day there were gates, but we pushed through anyway. Third day, there was no way of getting past the gates and we could only see the park from behind the gates.

A few conferences, article readings later, I came to learn gradually that there was some deep history and precedence to it if Huell didn't already impart that into mind.

Many of the lot’s constantly replenished murals have been featured in magazines, photography books, art history textbooks and documentaries. Taggers come from all over – San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London – to paint there and document the murals. Art students from Japan make the pilgrimage to the lot where 2nd Street and Glendale Boulevard meet in the shadow of downtown to soak up the atmosphere.

Belmont Art Park applying for status as cultural landmark.

From the 1980s, up until last November, the site was a popular neighborhood gathering place, outdoor art gallery, ancient Mexican Indian ballgame court, and a profitable film shoot location. In early 2003, planning began for building a 276 unit apartment complex on this site, but the community was not alerted of these plans until August of 2004.

Part of the site used to be a Shell gas station in the 1940s. Underground Storage Tanks have been buried for all these years, but only recently leaked gasoline into the soil and groundwater, when they were removed, illegally, by the developers.

Interestingly enough, Belmont Art Park is the site where Edward Doheny discovered oil. The Doheny of the Doheny Foundation and Doheny St. in West Hollywood. I guess it's only a fitting history to a fitting end...

The historic and cultural importance of the graffiti was not recognized by the city. Only the tunnel, the yard, and substation were declared historic and cultural, not the layers upon layers upon layers of sweat and paint. They decided to monumentalize a substation, a place which handles the utilities of the transit system. Utilities which have long ceased to be functional. It's like worshipping your nearest non-working fire hydrant. They will celebrate the yard's cultural history and heritage by making it a new pee reservoir/dog park.

Belmont Art Park was closing down was to develop 276 housing units, 20% of which would be allocated for affordable housing. Initially, before the LA Times was writing about this, somehow I was led to believe that the condos would be developed for low-income housing. Young, dumb, beating the drum. I knew at the time that we needed affordable housing, but I'm not sure why affordable housing advocates were fighting for this as if it was some kind of solution to homelessness.

The lot has been used for tarasca, an ancient Mexican ballgame, and as a canvas for elaborate graffiti murals that have gained international notoriety and been the backdrop to films and commercials.

But other community activists argued the development would help solve a long-standing need for affordable housing in the dense neighborhoods that surround downtown.”I am tired of seeing people on the street,” said Alvivon Hurd, a downtown resident and member of ACORN, a housing advocacy group.

“As much as I like the park, I can’t take that position.”

The planned complex calls for 55 affordable housing units, an after-school tutorial program and surplus parking.

Alas, the Los Angeles Downtown News now reporting on the new development called Belmont Station at Glendale and 2nd St.:

Almost one-third of the residents who pre-leased market-rate units at Belmont Station are USC students, but Essex expects the property to be popular among young professionals and families who work Downtown, Prayonsirisak said.

"I thought an obstacle was, we were out of Downtown, but a lot of people were okay with that because Downtown, it's busy, it's crazy, there's so much stuff going on," she said. "Whereas here, when you leave from work even though we're just blocks away, it's kind of like the suburbs of Downtown."

Somehow, I don't think those affordable housing advocates from 2004 envisioned USC students, who usually can afford a $30,000 education and live kinda far from their campus, young professionals to be the big beneficiaries of the "suburban" developments.

In fact, there's class snobbery inherent in the discourse of the blogger trying to sell us on the new development.

Aside from its historic connections to the old Belmont Tunnel, the development is notable for its generous allotment of affordable housing - 55 of the 275 new residences have been set aside for low-income families.

I'm not quite seeing how "generous" things are when a family needs to make almost $60,000 a year just to live in the "affordable" studio with the lowest rents at $1600+. And only 20% of the units are priced at that "affordable" rate. Not quite seeing how the $4000 a month condos will do anything either to mitigate the nation's largest homeless population.

Belmont Station being an aforementioned solution to homelessness? Homeless and "those" people are listed as one of the blogger's reasons NOT to live there.

Equally intriguing is the way various people seem to perceive of the history that was there before them:

However, the structure may be sandblasted to remove decades of graffiti or painted to match its original color. Crews testing exterior paint chips found some with 150 to 200 layers of spray paint, a telling sign that the derelict station (and the site in general) was once a playground for graffiti artists and the homeless.

"We welcomed that with open arms, the history," Kinney said. "Obviously, it was a challenge because when we first saw it, it was all graffitied. But watching it progress, we decided we were going to take this theme and run with it."

The way they handled the issue of graffiti is as wasted fragments of past years, home to vandals and transients. It's treated as an obstruction. It's a history that doesn't need to be known or need to exist, essentially, cause were creating a new whitewashed one covered in green.

In the eyes of some potential buyers and people who follow real estate development, it is a place that "didn't exist" for 45 years.

I’m glad that this once forsaken neighborhood is coming back to life at such a rapid pace after more than a 45-year hiatus! The apartments look great!

Apparently, the neighborhood's been "dead", and is only "re-birthed" when his white flight-ass comes back to town.

In the end it's not about the muralists, the taggers, the spray cans, the tarrasca. It's not about Meta-Housing, the commentors, the new buyers. It's about the memory of a space of nowhere that was co-opted into a place of somewhere, which got exposure everywhere --- the essence of the roots of hip-hop. It's a place you won't find on a tourist map, but has just as much resonance. It's about the meanings created, manipulated, the interconnectedness of the pieces and the people, the folk who breathed into life from an ambiguous dirt pond in the teeth of downtown Los Angeles.

Creativity and the RE-MIX!!!1 via Youtube

2008-08-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

Nothing is ever really that original.

Just when you think you have a unique idea, somebody else has probably done it before. We have about 500,000 years as a speices, 6000 years of documented or written history, across 25,000 miles of earth, with over 6.7 billion people on this planet currently. Assuming most of them have similar capabilities, there is an infinite potential for communication and expression which will also carry on its variations, somebody's bound to have thought what you have.

New technology tends to encourage new nodes of connections, which spawn new ways to interpret our culture and new complications.

While the internet has been up and running en masse for about 15-20 years now, at its root is a materialist and consumerist ideology: the idea that the internet user is there to passively seek information, conveniently do business, communicate with people on limited scales, and perhaps share a few tidbits and old things.

As I recall during the early days of America Online, chat rooms, and the enticement of online shopping, the internet did not exist to produce new information but really just to offer a new way to manipulate information. As with any technology, the internet was not there to produce anything new but to conveniently commence old habits from the paper and pen world --- just in a new way.

Now that the en masse internet is about ready to get its license and start driving, the en masse internet itself is developing its own habits.

We've had years of online messaging, almost a substitute for the phone, except for the fact that you do not hear a human voice. We've had years of message boarding where inside information can be exchanged between professionals and/or hobbyists on any particular subject from politics to sports. We've had a few years of social networking, where people connect and re-connect.

We've had years of peer-to-peer networking where music, video, and photo files would be traded and shared amongst people...to the chagrin of the Recording Industry of America.

We've had years of blogging where people share their ideas and have the opportuity to act as journalists.

We've had a few years of video sites, but those were restricted to people who could afford the webspace.

Enter Youtube. A medium that provides the webspace for people en masse to post their own videos.

Videos, which they could actually watch on site, on command, unlike traditional peer-to-peer networking where you had to know a subject before you consummated a download. They could just happen upon many more videos and variations based on the "related videos" tab. What's more is that they could post their own variation or interpretation of a video, creating further connection and investment in the site.

In addition to being able to watch video on site, they could make comments as if they were on a message board or on a social networking site. However, with some anonymity also the ability to make strong affirmations, rejectons, and even comment on other commentors themselves.

For philosophers, human condition thinkers, youtube makes new food-for-thought fodder as it did for this guy:

He talks about how new connections are to be made over youtube.

I was most intrigued by his notion of cultural inversion (30:34). In the videos uploaded, generally we want to express our individualism, independence, and popularity while at the same time we want community, relationships, and authenticity. We want to express how unique and popular we are, but we also want to belong to something and we don't want things that are full of crap --- the assumption that underlies popular things.

Youtube is a way of negotiating these different extremes. It is prime representative of the new internet with its own new habits. The Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 is a medium we use to produce things as opposed to simply communicating things from the "real world". It is the real world. It's the way we communicate.

With youtube, and other web 2.0 applications we have a new medium to explore and play, learn what connections can be made, and what connections can't be made in general social norms....

Which is kind of funny...

The connections that we can and that some video uploaders do make seem to be quite limited by Copyright law. Remixes unless by the original artist are illegal. Ripping DVDs are illegal.

Essentially, what youtube makes us is a society of thieves rummaging for answers.

The man in this video talks about how technology introduces new complications and ultimately changes law.

Patent law in the United States has always seemed kind of regressive in that they've let corporations dominate it, to the point where it seems to the average person that they're the ones responsible for progressive technology. They're the ones who've come up with every great innovation and invention --- stripping away the context and the authenticity, the knowledge of the common person.

Youtube encourages that knowledge of the common person.

For him, Youtube provides the ability to re-mix and re-make. The re-mix, the re-make acts as a form of literacy, a form of communication. This form of communication acts as a new way to conceptualize and re-organize the world...and perhaps spawn a whole new set of ideas. It's a collection of syntheses that can exponentially spawn new modes of thought. It's sort of like the effect of the shot of earth from a satellite photo from space...inspires a growing, ecological, interconnectedness consciousness.

The insensibility of copyright law is that everything restricts creativity.

It's ironic that a society that likes to call itself "free" in comparison to the "not free", and fight for "free" has such laws that

His end point: Lawmakers are not going to stop this tide of people taking things and re-appropriating them, the best they can do is label them as doing things "wrong." Like the lawmakers adapted to other modes of technology, they must reasonably adapt to new Web 2.0, user-produced content.

That said, here are my top 9 favorite remixes of various things from popular culture, mostly my childhood.

9) Doug Theme Song

Done in 3 speeds. A waste of time, but funny! The slow version strikes me as pretty funny to watch when high.

8) Renaldo Lapuz - You Are My Brother

I love this motherfucker. He is exactly the phenom that the anthropologist in the first video was talking about.

7) Super Mario Bros. Theme Song

A mellowed out version of the plumbers who eat shrooms and their theme song.

6) Inspector Gadget Theme Song

Kinda weird looking, but can't say it's a lack of skills. Flute and beatboxing.

5) Rihanna - Umbrella

I need to know her.

4) Curtis Mayfield - Move on Up

Simply awesome

3) Capcom's Street Fighter - Guile's Stage

2 and 1) Mortal Kombat v. Street Fighter

This was all video-game based. Obviously, the video games have never actually been merged, but some graphic artist took his time to show us what could be...in two parts! Storyline's funny, but I love seeing the action.

Flow, the Film via Words about Water

2008-08-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

This documentary could've been called Hustle & Flow but that was already taken.

"Hustle" would have several meanings...

It could mean the way that some people in the world have "to hustle" in the sense of working, just to fulfill the basic need that is water.

"Hustle" could also connote what big national corporations do to those people in the poker, I'm-going-to-rip-you-the-hell-off sense.

Hustle or no hustle Flow, the Film has been my favorite movie this year. Be Kind Rewind has been officially bumped, and I'm not sure that seeing the Dark Knight could reveal to me anything via fiction and storytelling that would amaze me in the way exposed realities would.

"Flow" took on threads of issues from water privatization to damming to water filtration innovations. They managed to weave those issues together through a rich collection of expertise, knowledge, personal anecdotes, and statistics through countries from India to South Africa to Bolivia to the United States.

"You have to realize that these water companies are all started by Bankers," said some French guy. I'm not sure of his name, but I am sure of his statement, or at least on-screen English translation.

The idea of privatization of human needs entered my consciousness through a documentary called "The Corporation." They were talking about privatizing human genes, air, and water. While I'm not sure about what's happened with the privitzation of genes and air, I know that water is going to be one hell of a battle.

At the heart of this documentary is a bomb on captialism. I'm here to take an Omar-like 12-guage snipe at capitalism and the market economy.

Oil and electricity are the two large industries on this planet. It's not bad in itself that they are gargantuan.

But as the old Spiderman saying goes "With great power, comes great responsibility."

These mega-corporations are built to structurally ignore that little detail of "great responsibility" mainly because they are built to do one thing: accumulate.

Accumulate resources. Accumulate enough good press to keep doing what they're doing. Accumulate profits. Accumulate enough political power to sustain...profits. Unless challenged by people, they have no reason whatsoever to grab "just enough" of what they need, lest they want to end the control, the business, the lavish lifestyle they enjoy.

What makes a lot of what they do bad for the rest of the people is that they find ways to monopolize control of resources --- despite being only a peta-fraction of people in the bigger picture that is the world's population. Their game is all politics, pro-actively suppressing ways to stop people from using those resources.

For oil and electricity, they do it by mining, drilling, and logging to the fucking up of the way of life for humans, animals, and fauna nearby. In the Amazon, these corporations will use para-military forces and court systems to intimidate people away from the resources.

The United supports homegrown mega-corporations because they throw money to their campaigns. In return, the US gets its oil resources by starting wars in the Middle East wherever the oil is.

A lot of work usually happens in places and spaces where the press isn't seen or heard unless you look for it...kind of like rape. The aptonym "raping the environment" is hereby strengthened.

It's one monumentally fucking large thing for these gargantuan industries to co-opt and manipulate resources that we have all lived without for millennia practically obliterating other ways of life, but the industry trailing behind in profiteering is something right at the heart of all life...

"Millions of people have lived lives without love, but not one of them without water."

Water.

The sustenance of all life. Can't live more than a few hours without it.

Perhaps on the surface logic of economics, it makes sense to sell it.

You sell things to people when they "demand" something, presumably because they "need "it. Unfortunately "demand" is the substitute for "need" in market economies and can be used interchangeably. This interchangeability between these terms then blurs the line in the thought processes of these people invested in the market economy. It's all just a game of non-stop, tunnel-visioned, one-dimensional accumulation. Market dictates not who needs the water, but eventually only those who can "pay" for it.

Water is now a 425 billion dollar industry, in the same planet where 2 billion people suffer from waterborne diseases and have no easy access to potable water. Water is actively being taken, guarded off, and "owned" by the same school of thought that does any and everything to monopolize control of oil and electricity. Whether Nestle's in your backyard at Mount Shasta bottling whatever water they get or the government in India is calling your self-made water harvest "illegal", the issue transcends borders and is bound to affect you sooner or later.

What struck me was how government agencies purporting to solve these water crises, only functioned to serve the Nestles, the Coca-Colas, the Suez.

The World Bank, International Monetary Fund would come on board to these countries not fully integrated within the market economy purporting to give debt relief. In exchange for that aid, the World Bank effectively became the government in those countries. They effectively held Bolivia's water resources as hostage. They included clauses in their loans specifically requesting water privatization. Bolivia would allow foreign corporations to "manage" water. "Managing water" meant water privatization, which trickled into such effects such as the cutting off of water streams, its pollution, and even higher water bills for everyone.

Luckily, the people in Bolivia were able to fight back. But this took a sustained massive series of rallies and protests for something they should've never had to battle for in the first place. However, the poor folk still appear to be paying more money than the rich folk for their water, and there is still no money to build new infrastructure.

In dam projects are another method through which corporations seize upon water for their own use. This is the infrastructure that severely disrupts local folks way of life in every sense of the term. It's terrible for local ecology, it cuts off river streams, and it makes people, who have been dependent on that ecology, to move for lack of choice.

Cutting off that ecological cycle cannot be understated. It would be kind of the equivalent if some guy really into the green movement decided that he would cut out power lines and power plants all over the city just so he could plant more trees. We are people dependent on oil and electricity, to get to and finish our jobs to be able to easily access our resources.

Our sense of ecology is corrupted by only individualist short-term spurts of get it and dump it. Quite reflective of the American relationship in popular tv shows, and other mediums. Get sex and then dump it! Add a "Woo!" for effect!

If someone disrupted our power lines and roads...People have enough trouble giving up their cars for transit, imagine that option being completely gone and useless. Imagine not being able to use computers, television, and other technological mediums all because some jerk decided to put trees instead of power lines.

The thing that struck a nerve about this was the number of people displaced because of those projects. Whether the dams in the Amazon, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, China, Brazil each time one was built, upwards of 100,000s of people into the millions would be displaced. They'd have to move somewhere and adapt.

And it's not as if they couldn't adapt either, there were plenty of brilliant ideas from people.

The highlight of the film were the creative ways in which people from other countries retrieved water where there weren't many options. I liked the idea of using UV technology to actually filter water, because of its low-cost-ness. It's essentially about using the UV-light like that in the flourescent lamp to disinfect the water.

There was rainwater harvesting from India led by a guy named Rajendra Singh. The gist was that they would collect rainwater to replace the groundwater. Basic idea which had been done for centuries, but his idea seemed to encapsulate whole regions and entire ecologies --- accounting for both shortage and lack of potability. The effect is that he was able to re-energize rivers and streams in a region notorious for drought in Rajasthan.

The irony is that someone from a mega-water-corporation, the Suez, told him that what he was doing was illegal, and he too had to fight in courts just to do what was apparently free in the "free market."

The documentary ended with my favorite solution: a little quip about play pumps used to retrieve ground water.

My favorite for its integration of communal gathering, play, and utility. That's fuckin' dippin' dots to me.

However, I have to wonder why these solutions haven't caught on more quickly.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis at Work: Labeled Folders and Working Memory

2008-08-13T06:36:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Lee Whorf said this

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way

Essentially, nature is what it is, reality is what it is, but we create thought about nature and/or reality based on how we label it. We label things the way we do because we've learned it from some type of institution, be it family, school, church, or tribe.

I learned that it's usually best to be as specific as possible when in the process of organizing things and labeling.

However, why exactly I needed to be specific when labeling something wasn't clear until recently.

It hit me when I was filing hard copy foundation information away for my old job...

I had two choices to make when filing away this information. Either

a) make a hard copy labeled manila folder specifically for the foundation
b) dump it in a general hard copy folder

If I did "option a" and made a hard copy labeled manila folder specifically for a foundation, there would be room for it to accumulate information. I could add all the stuff related to that foundation including its annual reports, its 990s, its Foundation Center search page. With that information all tucked away into one folder, we'd have a very good snapshot of this foundation. We could learn about the foundation's giving patterns, giving amounts, etc.

Conversely, if I didn't make a labeled folder, all this information would accumulate in the general folder, "option b". Dumping things in the general manila folder would save me time and resources. I usually did this for foundations that did not provide much information. One more manila folder saved, one part of a tree saved!

However, using this method, distinguishing pertinent things between foundations could be somewhat more difficult, especially if I just started dumping all the information available in the general manila folder.

As the swath of information grows, I'll be less likely to peer through any specific foundation information unless I really have to. So it essentially becomes this big pile of crap that I don't want to deal with. The annual reports, the 990s, the Foundation Center search pages might get scrambled with another foundation's information. Things would be worse if some of the information was unlabeled and could not be attributed to one foundation.

Essentially, if I created the new manila folder, I allowed a foundation's folder to accumulate information. I could put as much stuff in there without it getting mixed up with another foundation. Up to a point where it doesn't seem like a mass of information, I can potentially keep adding and growing information. I could add more and more, that is until it becomes difficult to actually use the folder in carrying those papers. Best of all, I can recall the information simply by pulling up its folder and getting what I want out of it.

If I overuse the general folder to the point where I can't even lift the folder with the papers, the items in the folder become one big mass of information. If I overused, even though I knew the information was in there, I'd still take time to dig through the information.

So from that point, I decided to be as specific as possible and consume more manila folders on behalf of the organization.

By doing this, I could help the organization do two things: 1) grow the specific information it had on foundations 2) expedite the process of information retrieval.

Growing specific information.

Expediting information retrieval.

Two big concepts that existed if I built a new labeled folder. Broken down, a new labeled folder is just a depot for me to get whatever I think is "specific" information, and get it quickly.

Making metaphors to my own human memory, if I could simply take that concept of building new "labeled folders", I too, could also grow information into my head and expedite information retrieval. But how the heck do I build "new labeled folders?" in my own mind?

When I first starting using delicious to save important and interesting web pages accessible anywhere I went provided I had internet connection, I learned pretty quickly that I was interested in the "brain."

I saved a lot of things under the self-created category "brain."

But now that I look back at my delicious page, and currently the category "brain" has 538 items under it. I bookmarked 538 items under the category brain, which is kind of intimidating. It's a whole mass of shit to deal with! Interesting information, but I'll need a whole lot of energy to go through it again. Unless I was paid to navigate my own shit trail, I would never be able to navigate this endlessly broad category again.

To chomp on that information, however, I developed a plan. The same plan I had when I was making new labeled Manila folders. The "brain" had obviously become that overstacked "general" folder. All I needed to do was "create more folders." Creating folders within a delicious bookmarking context means creating more "tags" or categories. Instead of just "brain" accumulating everything, all I had to do was be more specific about what part of brain it had to do with...whether it's been "brainimaging", "memory", "perception."

Why did I not just label things specifically from the start?

It's simply because when I started delicious account, I only had a general interest in the brain. There wasn't too much distinction for me to make between an interesting study on alzheimer's disease and an interesting study on autism. It was just all "brain" to me.

But now that I have more distinctions to make between items pertaining to the brain, I now have the necessary room to grow...grow into that scholar of memory who knows the categories, the labels, the symbols and can retrieve that information quick enough to be in the conversation.

Hospitals: The New Law Enforcement Agencies!

2008-08-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

"What that does for us, it puts a strain on our system, where we're unable to provide adequate care for our own citizens," said Alan Kelly, vice president of Scottsdale Healthcare in Arizona

These US health care facilities seem to take the Hippocratic oath of "do no harm" to new unprecedented and broader levels each time I read about them in the news.

Characteristic of this culture of consumption and wasting, the new thing seems to be all about dumping patients.

First, stories of dumping patients on skid row in LA.

Now, hospitals are actually carrying out deportations.

"Many American hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance."

It's an American institution, if you can't find a way to fix the problem, you waste lots of resources to "dump" the "problem" elsewhere and have them fix it.

This is kind of like how Los Angeles County will soon run out of landfill space, and as of 2009 ship their trash over 200 miles by rail over to Brawley, CA never to deal with it again.

Hospitals seemingly running out of nursing home or rehab space, will go out of their way to ship their patients via plane to what appears to be their own country never to deal with them again.

The company line on these deportations seems to be the following:

1) immigrants take up our resources
2) nursing homes and rehab programs won't take them because they are uninsured
3) were federally regulated to put uninsured patients on Medicaid in "appropriate" care, so basically were trapped! Help!

1) The irony is that we already do a good job of taking other people's resources, but their complaints are never really taken into account. Naturally, when you take something away from people forcibly and without their mass consent, they will probably want to get things back. It's pretty much a social version of kharma.

Whether its logging, deforesting, mining, oil drilling, declaring war, it's probably safe to assue that were in some other country with borders, making agreements with people who run their countries like drug cartels, essentially stealing people's stuff for profit.

Wasting of resources? Americans already consume 25% of the world's electricity being only 5% of the world's population. It's vomit-inducing everytime someone says that "immigrants are consuming our resources" A lot of Americans do not have the right to EVER say this without being massively hypocritical.

The only thing is that our consumption and waste of world and other country's stuff never enters people's imagination unless they are dedicated environmentalists and can be safely identified eco-nuts.

2) What gets me is that according to these hospitals, deporting them is such a costly adventure.

In spite of costly litigation issues, cost of the flight, they still go through with it anyway! Twisted inspirational proof that even with limited funds as hospitals have, you can sort of make what you want happen, happen.

They've long violated the Hippocratic Oath when

It seems like a case where these hospital administrators are taking the opportunity to absolve themselves of responsibility, perhaps make an ideological statement while appearing to hold up to federal and ethical standards.

This issue in particular, of undocumented people in long-term health care, doesn't appear to be one of purely economics. The hospitals are not dealing with such an overwhelming amount of immigrants, that these immigrants are being ignored and falling through the cracks because there aren't many of these cases in the first place. Since the patients in these situations require long-term care, they aren't exactly patients that doctors can mindlessly sift through.

Judging from the quotes of one of the representative hospital administrators and the trends of hospitals who are more likely to deport immigrants, it doesn't appear to be cases of unintentional uncontrollable decisions, but actually rather calculated and intentional.

As usual, there's either a profit and/or ideologically-flawed Americanist mechanism at work. At any rate, the lack of care given to him is based solely on artifical, human-created boundary lines.

If a visitor from another planet were to assess our political stage, he'd probably seize upon that the concept: Artifical, human-created imaginary boundary lines.

Lines that only exist because humans decided that they need exist as if nothing of meaning happens outside those boundaries and nothing will benefit from it either.

Casually Suggesting Racism in the AP News Wire: Cities with the Most Volunteers

2008-07-29T23:36:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of one way to subtly show your bigotry if you're an AP writer.

Title of the News Story: "Miami Ranks Lowest in Volunteering"

Leads off with...

"MIAMI (July 27) - Blame it on the traffic. Or the number of new immigrants. Or the allure of the beach. Whatever the reason, Miami has secured the bottom spot -- No. 50 among major U.S. cities -- in new rankings of the percentage of adults who volunteer."

http://news.aol.com/article/miami-ranks-lowest-in-volunteering/102329

Blame it on...the number of new immigrants for low marks in volunteering. It's interesting how you can blame a whole swath of people tagged "immigrants" in the same way you can blame inanimate things like traffic and your desire to go to the beach.

Then expecting only the finest of scholarly thought, I looked over at the comments section to see how they would receive this article, and sure enough the Rhodes Scholars came out for this...

"No suprise here. The fact that people in Miami do not volunteer is a preview of what the United States is rapidly becoming. Not a unified nation but a collection of a few major immigrant groups interested in enjoying our economy not giving anything back to the culture. And it isn't just Miami that's the problem. Nor is it just Hispanic immigrants. Many recent immigrant groups from Asia are equally self-centered. Kiss the U.S. good bye and welcome the new two class economic system."

"Florida might as well be a different country now. It has a different culture, language, and mind-set than the rest of the U.S. Hispanic organizations have said they intend to take back the lands once controlled by Spain. The Reconquista Movement. It's working. California has a record budget deficit due to social services granted to all people in CA. The burden of recent undocumented immigrations is bankrupting them. They'll have no choice but legalize them and bring them into the tax base. One way or the other they will regain political control."

"South FL is basically a different country and different world. On the outside it's money dripping - huge yachts, fancy restaurants, expensive exotic cars, expensive stores, but there is a huge underworld non English speaking people. When we've been down there I feel like I'm in a foreign country with very little English being spoken and if it is, is usually spoken with a Hispanic or Caribbean accent. It is a fun place to visit, but would NEVER want to live there!!

"Okay..here's the deal in Miami...they're are alot of young kids running around trying to live above their means cus that's what most of them do there. They are too damn self absorbed to think of others in need.Then you can add in the immigration situation. Those that come to Miami...typically from Cuba...are too busy trying to find work and make enough money to help their familes that are still in Cuba.The organizations that need volunteers should use a gorilla warfare type of advertising. Mostly at night at the clubs, or outside the clubs...you might actually get a bunch of kids that moved from the higher states in ratings and convince them there are stilll people in need there."

There's nothing at all in the content of the report regarding immigrants, but that won't stop people from using it as a platform to vent their racism! Those who write up this wire report tell us that we have their permission to blame them anyway! Nope, we don't need to have a reason to blame groups of people whom you don't understand, you can just sort of...do it. Pretty cool, huh?

Peculiar is even the images to hammer this not-so-subtle racism either.

Another brown illegal hanging his head in shame for taking an American job.

Compared to images from cities with the most volunteers.

Good ole Austin Texas with the 'Murrican flag.

The nice old white families in Portland Oregon.

Surely, you won't find immigrants tainting the American spirit in Austin, TX or Portland, OR.

What's interesting is the fact that economic and city infrastructure is not targeted for questioning at all, and probably has more to do with volunteering than anything else.

The city of Vice, a city of vices, and a city built on Disney World, NY. They all seem to be built on corporation-operated, thrill-seeking tourist attractions. The first three especially don't strike me as cities with tight communal, familial, and spatial networks, and therefore, they aren't afforded the opportunity to volunteer as much.
I would think people volunteer mostly through opportunity and strong personal networks and communities.

Pangea Day

2008-07-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

Good lord, I didn't know about Pangea Day. Happened on my 24th birthday no less.

Pangea Day.

The event, in short, a rundown of people-connecting, human condition short films. The website containing these films, I discovered in the archives of the 6998 emails that I haphazardly left unread.

In light of my facebook old picture uploading craze and the fact that I was all over LACC around pretty girls yesterday, I really felt this one by Ted Chung.

http://www.pangeaday.org/filmDetail.php?id=74

That just made me think of why I become paralyzed when these opportunities present themselves. Asian American Male syndrome, maybe.

Then there's this:

http://www.pangeaday.org/filmDetail.php?id=6

The Elevator Music piece reminds me of so many things. I guess I would liken it to a giant choosing not to overpower and inundate. Respectful, humble, do-what-they-do in that context.

And this:

http://www.pangeaday.org/filmDetail.php?id=14

A piece about people playing volleyball between the artifically-created wall that separates Mexico and the US

This:

http://www.pangeaday.org/filmDetail.php?id=49

A short about tourism in post-Hurricane New Orleans.

This:

http://www.pangeaday.org/filmDetail.php?id=53

A real scary short about a mob in Cameroon ready to beat down some kid just because he stole a few chickens.

And finally, this:

http://www.pangeaday.org/filmDetail.php?id=47

About William Kawkamba, the kid from Malawi who built a windmill. Built a windmill for his family out of old bicycle parts, bamboo, and basically lot of scraps. I posted about this before, I called him hip-hop because he made something out of nothing without any formal college education. Inspiring to the infinitieth degree to anyone who ever wants to do anything other than what they've been prescribed to do.

The Battle of the Ghostbusters!

2008-07-21T06:38:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there was a Ghostbusters cartoon series before the ones that we know of today that call themselves the REAL Ghostbusters. There was a reason that they added "REAL" to the Ghostbusters that we all know and love, assuming that you all know and love the Ghostbusters that had Slimer, Winston, Janine, Egon, Ray, and Peter.

Check this the heck out:

Yeah, WTF.

An ape is one of the ghostbusters. Turns out that he's the scientific brains of the operations.

It's actually based on the original and first Ghost Busters, which is quite peculiar in its rural orientation in itself.

But it's theme song has been lodged in my hippocampus (look at me using neuroscience terms!) region because of its sheer ridiculosity. The monkey barking actually reminds me of this one Filipino guy on the Macon St. basketball court who would curl his lips into that "O" shape as if he were about to woof.

Someone had commented that its quirkiness in cartoon form was ripped straight out of the Scooby Doo. The monkey represents the scared non-vernacular-speaking, yet highly communicative, intelligent "animal." The human protagonists appear to be these quirks who operate on the margins of society.

The equipment they use is even quirky. Or at least it appears so because it doesn't appear that they even try to explain why they use those objects. They're too busy bouncing around and acting strange, which gives off this very all-around disengaging, disorienting feel. From the skull phone that would tell them their next mission to the humanoid bouncing carriage car, there was too many elements left unexplained to actually understand the storylines.

Though they may operate in what appears to be New York, they react to things defined as outside the city. Representative of its behaviorist antecedent (I always wanted to use that word), at the end they have some kind of explanatory lesson that can be gleaned from the events.

Despite their slightly marginalized status, they apparently had their followers and even took time out of their schedules to do PSAs:

An astute commentary on the appearance of drug dealers.

Well, this series seems to have been part of NBC's final attempts at showing cartoons before their dive into Saved by the Bell and other teen-oriented shows.

Now look at the contrasts to this:

The Real Ghostbusters is the highly institutional cartoon relative to the one above in more ways than one.

It's institutionalism is even embedded in it's logo. A strict crossing out of ghosts, as if it was a say no to drugs or forest fires kind of thing vs. the wavy, almost smiling ghost that you see in its predecessor.

vs.

The Real Ghostbusters is the most known and it brings out this highly authoritative feeling. Creators of this series did not portray them not as kooky, quirky outsiders but as these respected fireman-type heroes who actually did science.

Yes, yes, a double dollop of authority. Firemen as the go-get em tiger types and scientists who strategically and effortlessly planted words like "frequency", "plasm", and "proton pack" into my pre-pre-school vocabulary. They even had a secretary, of course a woman, to take calls.

The equipment they use is not weird at all. At least, I never thought to think how weird it was because they explained why they need to use each of their objects. Ecto-1 is a highly functional shaggin' wagon which Winston maintains which gets them to places. Proton packs bust ghosts. Put those punks in the containment unit, which actually is peculiar and would make them seem to justify the prison-industrial complex --- by taking care of these societal "problems" and packing them into an "airtight" scientifically inescapable portal.

But I won't go there. Yet.

The net effect of this Ghostbusters is that they made it accessible to anyone. Like the other Ghostbusters, they too operated in some type of firehouse in New York, except it actually felt like New York because of the many interactions with regular people.

Spanking Your Brains Instead of Your Butt

2008-07-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

Key quote: "For years, parents and school maams were limited to spanking their butts, now were spanking their brains."

What was interesting was that after that quote, he was talking about how the kids would be easier to control. You could make kids more obedient. You can flip a switch that would turn off the gay button.

I'm not sure how parents are reacting or if they actually are overmedicating their children, but I do know that all these chemical psycho-social "solutions" are more readily available than they ever were. I have to wonder how the human race has made it so far presumably without its help for over 2 million years.

Every and anything in this age of microbiological-pharmaceutical corporation growth can be defined as a "sickness" or weakness and then "fixed." But fixed seems to mean acting "normal". "Normal" in our context seems to mean "controllable." Oddly enough though, it's only the people in the extremes who we ever seem to acknowledge or talk about.

Thanks to the idea from this post.

A Libertarian's Dream? The City of Dubai

2008-07-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

I've heard about Dubai in Michael Jordan's escapades around the world. His place to golf.

Business people seem to like talking about visiting the luxuries and "modernity" of Dubai.

Some people want to retire there.

But its a city of excess. Malls. Sprawl.

As I've learned from Heather Rodgers' Gone Tomorrow, with tons of excess combined with cleanliness comes a lot of hidden truths.

Essentially, a lot of labor gets fucked out.

Mike Davis was interviewed.

Quotes of interest:

The Barksdale, Stanfield organizations essentially ran Baltimore like the ruling families rule Dubai. However, the difference is that those at the top in Dubai were handed what they got.

-"Economics in Dubai have changed dramatically since 9/11 as the U.S. Administration realized that putting all their economic and political investments in Saudi Arabia was potentially dangerous. Also since the 1970's the Gulf countries learned from their bad experience in knowing that basing the economy on vast oil profits only could mean that with quick changes to oil markets their economies could be left with nothing.

Dubai is the product of a long range investment project and Dubai has been particularly skilled perhaps if not brilliant in this regard. However it must be highlighted that this economic plan doesn't ensure jobs for people within the region, as Dubai has utilized a plantation strategy invented by the British and then copied by the U.S., now being implemented in Dubai."

With such an economy that doesn't ensure jobs, what exactly happens to labor?

-"Stefan Christoff: Concerning labor in Dubai in your article extensive article on Dubai, Sinister Paradise, you write that, "Dubai, together with its emirate neighbors, has achieved the state of the art in the disenfranchisement of labor. Trade unions, strikes, and agitators are illegal, and 99% of the private-sector workforce are easily deportable non-citizens. Indeed, the deep thinkers at the American Enterprise and Cato institutes must salivate when they contemplate the system of classes and entitlements in Dubai." So regarding this passage can you provide more details concerning labor conditions in Dubai?

Mike Davis: Now the above outlines the theory behind Dubai.s labor policies, however labor has showed that it is capable of fighting and organizing in Dubai. Labor organizing is driven by desperate labor conditions that many visitors to Dubai don't see or willingly ignore. It is estimated that upwards of one-million foreigner workers are currently in Dubai, living in conditions that multiple human rights organizations have condemned.

Hundreds-of-thousands of foreign workers live in camps, often without air conditioning, who are bused each morning to construction sites at which these workers are doing some of the hardest manual labor in the world with temperatures at times reaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Dubai is widely accused of covering up high numbers of workers deaths on these massive construction sites, including the Burj Dubai tower currently under construction.

Despite Dubai's friendly face and openness to western vices, people who travel to Dubai to do independent research on the conditions of workers are often deported from the country. Last year an Indian-American academic researcher who wanted to study the labor conditions for foreign workers in Dubai was detained within twenty-four hours upon arrival then deported."

The You-Defined Sports Commentary: The Wave of the Future?

2008-07-18T03:30:00.000-07:00

Over on the RealGM basketball Chicago Bulls board, there is a poster named Dougthonus who does a podcast every so often.

I've never listened, but judging from poster's comments, it'd probably be best to get to going on it.

To me, he is the new breed of fandom and sports journalism. A fan analyst. One of the boys...err...fans, but also capable of insight and perhaps even a dollop of humor.

Doug makes good and bad posts like anyone else.

He might be looked at as lacking inside information, but we all find out this information in peta-seconds after the rumor leaks. For example, right now, at this very moment, no one, including the ESPNers know the situation regarding the contracts of Ben Gordon and Luol Deng. The fans, the ESPN journalists are all on the same level.

He also might be looked at as a homer at first with nothing better to do, but with information available anywhere, combined with sustained postings and analysis on the Bulls, he can be a lot more nuanced in his questions to NBA brass than the average ESPN or TNT reporter.

What it boils down to is that he doesn't seem to be as controlled as the ordinary journalists. It's this rawness, this assumed authenticity is something that seems to appeal to a lot of these Web 2.0 internet users today.

Summer League basketball in Orlando was sort of controlled by a mix of Web 2.0 internet users and fan-like commentary. Donte and Gallante seemed to generate a lot of attention just by commenting on whatever seemed to come to mind, and in the process responding to relatively unfiltered viewer-generated email. They had a running commentary on possible names for the new Oklahoma City NBA team, starting with the Bombers. Yikes! They answered questions about what someone should eat for lunch. Someone even sent them an email about possibly interviewing Dougthonus, who incidentally was at Summer League, to which Gallante responded, "he's probably that guy in the purple shirt."

They did not need to say much about the game. What they did in 2 days of "coverage" was much more entertaining than the entire veteran ESPN crew on NBA Draft Night or any other game.

Yes, it's just summer league basketball, and people talking through an NBA game might be a little different.

However, consider UEFA Eurocup 2008, the tournament for European teams in soccer which happens between every two years that the World Cup isn't happening. The tournament was covered by well-known soccer commentators, Andy Gray from FIFA 08 and some Scottish guy. However, what was peculiar was that they were not at ground level. They were at ESPN studios. They were seeing what we could've seen on TV ourselves. No special access to the players, and once they got back from the viewing room to make those in-game commentaries, they would go straight to the ESPN studio with some ESPN guy and Julie Foudy and continue their conversation. The only differences between those commentators and the average fan watching the tournament is that they were probably well-paid to give their opinions and they could indoctrinate on a mass scale.

Now in an age of digital television, an age where these basketball games are broadcast globally, and in different languages, with commentaries by people dressed in suits, but still as far from the game as we are...

...streamed to people like me who want nothing more than moving images of balls in hoops

...just as the newspaper industry is getting ripped to shreds and struggling to reinvent itself thanks in large part to the wide circulation of internet news (and probably environmental concerns as well)...

...just as TIME Magazine revealed that the person of the year last year was You...as in Youtube, as in regular folk person generated content...

...what is preventing fan-based sports play-by-play commentary from rising and supplanting sports commentary?

Depression of 2009, Economic Geogaphies of 1929

2008-07-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

I have no idea why I saved this blog here a month ago. For some reason, my memory recall of ideas has been hazy. I feel like I've been "tip of tongue" most of the time in which I know I had an idea, but it feels like I can't quite capture exactly what it is. I'm hitting everything, except the exact strand of thought that clarifies everything.

The Depression of 2009 and the Economic Geographies of 1929.

At the time I del.icio.us'ed it to my "blog" tag, I was thinking of a possible master's thesis, the geography of opportunity, for my Master's application, I made a trip to the Center for Land Use Interpretation bought a book and set of maps called Radical Cartography and another book called Slow Space.

Quotes of interest:

-"In discussions of the current financial crisis, the importance of housing and mortgages, and of foreign account imbalances, notably with East Asian manufacturing economies, suggests a failure in spatial fixes on which capitalism has been said to depend."

Spatial fixes I've learned from this blog, and this paper are simply "geographic expressions of an economic system."

-"It is a matter of material sites of social reproduction, such as the home."

So what was of interest to me? What was the question or questions I was interested in?

Some possibilities...

1) What were the economic cycles were people enmeshed in at the time? What was the physical infrastructure, layout that made this possible in the first place? Upon what did people depend on to obtain commodities to sustain their lifestyles? What was the geography that enabled them to depend on such things in the economy? I think this is likely what I was most wondering about.

2) What did the maps of 1929 look like? Was there spontaneous consumership and what did that look like?

3) Could it have to do with immigrants and following the flow of goods and commodities?

4) What were the social networks available? Upon what networks of relatives, co-workers, friends did people rely on during the depression?

5) What were the opportunities they saw and what did they seize upon?

I can't quite figure out what was interesting, so it's just here and maybe something else will remind me.

Making Sense of the Topic Are L.A.'s Hospital's Safe?

2008-07-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

What I saw in this lecture was a very real tension between the real suffering of the patient and the heavy dose of expectations and standards to be met within these enormous factory-like hospital systems.

The topic centered around hospital-induced infections in Los Angeles.

The panelists, three. One from the people's perspective, a patients-rights advocate. Two from the practitioner's perspective, a director from UCLA Medical Center and some kind of Risk Management/PR person from Kaiser Permanente.

The fireworks officially set ablaze when the patients-rights advocate demands transparency in hospitals.

"Transparency" in the sense that the general public know of the shortcomings and limitations that hospitals and doctors have. Transparency is just another means of making sure that the hospitals are "accountable." "Accountable" meaning reliable and trustworthy.

Trustworthy hospitals mean that doctors, nurses, and other caregivers are treating their patients/everyone well.

Treating their patients/everyone well. Keyword "/everyone."

Meanwhile, on the flip-side, from a doctor or health-care giver's perspective, what the patients' rights advocate was advocating was probably just one more teardrop of annoyance to a bucket load of them. I felt that with every joke the UCLA Medical Center guy was making and the corresponding audience laughter on topics such as making the patients pay for their care.

Years of medical school, internships, paying loans, generally in attempt to help people's wellbeing, 24-hour workdays, no holidays or weekends, seeing countless patients a year and having to treat everyone individually. It's only a matter of time before everyone becomes anyone, which you don't mean to, but you're too tired to care. On top of that, hospitals in LA are going bankrupt and closing down. There seem to be less and less doctors and other resources around to do anything.

But these people on the outside, the patients, their advocates don't see any of this struggle. They probably struggle to, but that isn't seen at all and even more variable outside of the hospital context. Not when that medical practitioner's top-rated hospital is moving into a billion-dollar state-of-the-art facility in the broken neighborhood of Westwood. This prestige and wealth only serves as fuel to the fire --- more reason for the advocate to run full force at the system yelling at the practitioner to stop fucking up! If they can fight the big fish, the patients will be heard.

All that the UCLA dude and Kaiser woman could talk about were the way they managed their hospitals. He was keen to point out that he was like a "mayor" of a small town. The woman was proud to report that they had taken steps in Kaiser to improve safety as adapted from the airline industry, which I thought was something of an odd connection to make from a patient/consumer perspective because airlines give no shit at all about how you're doing even if you do pay to be pampered. Actually, on second thought, maybe there is a connection after all!

They were very specific about the management improvements they've implemented in each of their hospital systems. They were very much in love with the systems implemented. UCLA dude was happy to talk about all the numbers achieved in his time as top dog. #3 rated Medical Center in the United States. Hitting the 99th percentile on public health measures intra-hospital.

Essentially, he was hitting on stuff that patients don't give a beer dump about, which he actually knows intuitively and mentions, but as a defense mechanism has to bring up anyway. All he could point out were these rankings and numbers, which is impressive. But anytime someone's argument of defense relies entirely on numbers, usually there's something weak underneath the argument. Numbers and standards ideally should never be an ends to meet, especially in a field that depends on individual well-being.

...but unfortunately it seems that's what these large bureaucratic systems inevitably entail...some blind adherence and satisfaction to an abstraction, numbers that are highly relative, which say virtually nothing about the quality of care. There's nothing wrong with him or any other hospital manager focusing on numbers as a means to show that you're doing well, but as long as these hospitals are overworked and remain underresourced thanks to the HMO system, they're never going to progress to a level where doctors en masse will see eye to eye with patients.

Inicidentally, UCLA guy mentioned that 1 out of 3 people still wouldn't recommend UCLA Medical Center to a friend, but it's odd that this wasn't a focus of the discussion.

Inevitably, the UCLA and Kaiser people's involvement with the management end elicits talk about the responsibility laying with individuals. System works fine, our standards work fine, its the individuals who fuck up. Individual doctors, whom they weren't going to talk about at all in this public lecture setting. And the faceless individual impatient patients. This is where the tension flares up.

In addressing the specific concern of hospital-induced infections, Kaiser woman could only stress the importance of washing hands, as if this was the cure to AIDS. UCLA man said washing hands was important but not visiting the hospital was probably best. Patient advocate presses on these big level administrators to give more specifics about how things apply to the patients.

With so much rancor flying between the patients-rights advocate and the hospital admins, it usually means that both sides expect too much from each other and don't get what they want.

The patients expect too much from the hospital admins/doctors/staff, and hospital admins/doctors/staff expect too much from the patients.

Patients expect doctors to be nice, they want better working facilities, they expect everything to be perfect, they don't pay etc. etc.

However, it's always easy to blame the individual patient for being in the wrong. What makes it appear this way is that patients usually aren't the united front and powerful organization that a hospital is. An impersonal, methodologically organized group of people who have been in the business for years dealing with numerous people can't possibly be wrong over some individual patient's judgement can they?

Moreover, there's this American idea that you must pay for everything with money. Like other industries, it also seems as though patients should pay for all the work and extra anguish that doctors go through. It's a business, no free lunch. Patients should be grateful for whatever service they get and being so open to taking patients in.

Patients are "consumers" in the sense that they do demand a limited resource --- the doctors' service. However, they are NOT consumers in the sense that they will keep demanding a good or service. They are not really ready, willing, and able consumers, but people who believe that they are not well and thus seek an avenue to be well.

There is not much sympathy in American public discourse for patients, and this extends towards the attitude toward the patient in the hospital.

Judging from my mom's stories and the discourse in this dialogue, hospital staff seem to expect that patients should understand what they personally go through as doctors/etc. They seem to expect patients to know how things in the hospital work. They expect patients to check for conditions online as if they were the ones who went to medical school and could diagnose and treat themselves. And the kicker is that they actually want people out of the hospital. Doctors thinking everyone is invested in healthy like they are, expect too much of their patients, so they get tired and frustrated as well.

Thus the equilibrium of tension between doctors and patients in LA hospitals continues. It seems that nobody really gets what they want at a hospital, but it's there because it's business. What strikes me is that doctors really don't want patients to come to the hospital cause they have enough people coming over, but they also want to make sure that they keep up business, especially if they could pay for it.

In the end, the management folks at UCLA and Kaiser could only talk about how patients need to "arm" themselves with information.

There isn't much taught in the public discourse about handling health crises yourself. The internet and google search might be changing that a bit, but not everyone has the internet nor search abilities necessary quite yet. People generally aren't wired to practices of folk remedies, etc.

In America's education system and public discourse, we see and we learn that it is hospitals that we must go to first for any and all health care needs. It's the most visible object. So then here comes the patient expectation system. It's big, it's grand, somebody's got to know something when you go there, right? Doctors know what they're doing, they're rich, they'll help me.

People generally DO NOT want to be in the hospital, but they simply do not know any viable options and hospitals seem to have been marketed as the place to be when sick. There isn't any curriculum in schools for home remedies, alternative medicines, and public health measures are kind of a joke.

The business of healing strikes me as crisis-oriented, kind of like calling a plumber to unclog your sink. It makes me wonder whatever happened to the home visit doctor that I would see in Lassie and other assorted 50s television shows.

Ronaldinho to AC Milan

2008-07-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

Ronaldinho, I hardly knew thee...

And now you're going to Italy.

I was a fan of something I hadn't really seen or experienced. I missed that 3-0 victory over Real Madrid with the standing O. I just missed the Champions League win.

I did however came in time to see Real Madrid and David Beckham win La Liga. I came in time to see Henry join you, Eto'o, Messi, and form what was supposed to be the most unstoppable attack. I came during Christmas to see you struggle against Real Madrid.

Seems like a ton of bad luck has hit this team the past 2 years. Was it adding the UNICEF to their kits, the headband, or the commencement of my fandom? Or was it personal habits of yours.

It's been a frustrating few years following the sports teams that I do, and Barcelona, you're one of them.

I know 'Dinho was a party boy, but I always wondered why this team couldn't just make things work. From what I can tell, this team seems to be so in love with its style and reputation (admittedly one that I liked) that it never actually got around to maximizing the talents of its players. From putting Henry on the wings all season, to sticking with Eto'o against ManU, to playing Deco fresh off injury, etc.. Everyone who hasn't been there a while always seems to want out.

With some of those old guys gone, I'm worried that this team doesn't have that pizazz to carry them any further than it went last season. Seems like this team likes to kill anything resembling that. We were already one of the top defenses in La Liga, and yet we buy all these defensive players. Whooptidoo.

Messi is alright, but honestly he's overrated --- his specialty isn't really kicking the ball in the net. He's our best ball-handler, but it doesn't matter unless you're getting the ball in the back of the net. If Thierry Henry can regain that Arsenal form and/or Eto'o his 2006 form, then maybe we have a shot. Perhaps even better if we got Adebayor.

All I know is that we need guys who will put pressure on the opposing goaltender, and why not get these "shooters" from a team called "Arsenal" if not for a good season-long pun?

It's July. Time to Look at the Bulls!

2008-07-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

I don't need crack, I have the RealGM Chicago Bulls Message board.

It's kinda disgusting how often I check that board for rumors during the summer time, even when things weren't so exciting. The Summer of 2000 was really what began all this, this summer-time obsession with offseason NBA basketball --- the year we drafted Fizer, Crawford, Bagaric, Voskuhl, Guyton, and El-Amin in one draft and also the summer where we were expecting to get T-Mac, but ended with Brad Miller, who wasn't bad, and Ron Mercer, who wasn't that good.

So, I've come a long way in this, or it's just been a long time where I haven't really obssessed with the Bulls during summer-time.

This one here's bound to be as exciting a summer as any. One big reason for this exciting summer happened on May 21, 2008 and officially concluded on June 26, 2008, 6:40 EST.

In two words, Derrick Rose.

In the context of watching the playoffs, he was a point guard in the mold of CP3 and D-Williams.

In the context of draft history, he was the Stevie Franchise pick to our Elton Brand.

He could also have been the Jason Kidd to Michael Beasley's Glenn Robinson.

In the context of our draft history and guard selections, he is going to be what J-Will was supposed to be.

I'm not sure that I liked the 2nd or 4th comparisons, especially given that Franchise's wheels have reduced him to another Penny, and J-Will's bicycle reduced him to a Bobby Hurley. I guess it's not helpful right now that one of the big topics on the board is the fact that he has tendinitis in his knees before his first summer league game. The uncertainty of a rookie player is so...unnerving...This is why my first instinct was to trade him for a known quantity like Carmelo Anthony.

I really can't tell what kind of player he's going to be because I haven't really sat down and watched him. I've only seen what I've seen mostly through highlight reels. I can only hope that he's jumping on the D-Will, CP3, soon-to-be-great point guard generation. That he's the guy that will live in the paint. That he's the guy who will live in the paint and kick it out.

To this point, all we've seen so far from him in his association with the Bulls are interactions with the media. From his draft interviews, Cubs-White Sox baseball games, the intro press conference, his interviews, he's not a media-savvy guy. 19-years old in a generation of text-messaging and abbreviated speech, mostly giving 3-sentence answers.

But even if there doesn't appear to be much, there's still something unique about him. After his intro press conference, when players usually just bounce, especially those who don't talk very much, he actally asked John Paxson if he could thank everyone for making things possible. It wasn't a cursory courtesy, some kind of procedural thing. He asked John Paxson for permission as if he was slightly embarrassed. Slightly embarrassed because it isn't something normally done, he knows it, but he still felt that he had to do it. The man lives unselfishness.

Not bad for a man whose supposed to be the white matter for this team, the connective tissue between the different functions in the brain.

That #23 in Memphis really fit him. It's a shame that he couldn't wear that number here all because some guy who apparently was very popular in Chicago wore that number already.

The #1 will do fine for him. Didn't think it would because I thought he would wear the #25, but hey it works. Officially puts to rest what I thought always fit Craw-diddy really well.

It would've been kind convenient if he took the #5 (with apologies to Andres Nocioni), so that those who bought the Jalen Rose jerseys wouldn't have to worry about buying a new one.

Anyhow, outside of Derrick Rose, Bulls have done a lot so far:

-Hired Vinny Del Negro (VDN) or Vinny Del Whito as Joe Go put it one time when VDN was still in the "L" playing for the Spurs. The jokers at the RealGM board have had plenty time to make references to Joe Pesci, his Italianness, and the fact that he kept mentioning in his introductory press conference, that "[coaching the team/learning on the job/establishing communication with the players/shaving his ass-hairs] would be a process."

Yes, yes, we understand it is all a process. The question is if he can progress in this process back to being considered playoff contenders, which is where this team was before 2007-2008. The way that he drilled into our heads that "[x] would be a process" didn't really inspire much confidence that he could get past that stage and get us into a "processed", finished product stage. Really seemed like the Bulls organization was just trying to lower everyone's expectations.

VDN has no coaching experience at all at any level, but was assistant GM for the Suns and so he was a bit familiar with Mike D'Antoni's system. As folks might recall, but later forget, Mike D'Antoni appeared to be John Paxson's first choice to replace one, Jim Boy-love. So Paxson hired what appears to be someone who could rip off D'Antoni's high-pace, 7-secnd offense, only for much cheaper than D'Antoni's 6 million dollar asking price.

Despite his inexperience, the cheapness of the organization, and this process talk, he still seemed to handle things quite well on the podium. Hopefully that translates to handling things well when were down 2 with less than 2 minutes left and he needs to find the right combo of players to put in, or draw up the right plays, or fire up the troops.

-Counter-balancing VDN's vast inexperience and broad management knowledge are the incoming Assistant coach trio of Del "fucking" Harris, Bernie Bickerstaff, and Bob Ociepka, whom I assume will focus on the more technical aspects of this team.

Most excited about Del Harris, who was actually a coaching candidate, and Bernie Bicks.

D.Harris was a coach of that Lakers squad with Eddie Jones, Cedric Ceballos, and Nick Van Exel so he knows a bit about getting the best out of an athletic young team without that outstanding, obvious #1 option.

Bicks always seems like a guy who can make something out of nothing. Seemed like he turned the artists formerly known as the "Bullets" around not too long ago.

Two guys who sat on NBA benches who've come to Chicago to become coaching assistants. Alright, it works for me if it does for them!

-Chris Duhon, back-up point guard for the past 3 years, signed with the Knicks.

I'll sort of miss him. I always thought he was the best point guard on the team, simply because he circulated the ball, unlike the man he was playing in front of him. Too bad, he never had anything resembling a jump-shot.

But at mid-summer, there's still lots of other stuff to settle:

As it stands, the roster is cluttered. Too many guys need minutes, especially at the 2, 3, and 4.

1: Rose, Hinrich
2: Gordon, Hinrich, Hughes, Sefolosha
3: Deng, Nocioni, Sefolosha
4: Goooden, Thomas, Nocioni
5: Noah, Gray

-The big thing is deciding if they're keeping both BG and Deng. Lots of people think that if BG signs only the qualifying offer instead of a 9-10 dollar extension, then we might as well trade him now. However, the latest interviews seem positive at least from BG's side. I'm hoping we could sign him to the same contract offered him last year.

-If we decide to keep BG, we must absolutely trade Kirk Hinrich, the 9.5 million dollar man who averaged 11.5 ppg in 32 mpg. He's a serviceable shooting guard at best, especially considering that he didn't average 12 ppg. The fact that he's making 9.5 million, an amount earned by Manu Ginobili, Josh Howard, Jason Terry, to be a backup who won't even get the majority of minutes at his natural position will not be doing us any favors.

However, even if we get rid of Hinrich, there's still the clutter at shooting guard, small forward, and power forward.

-At the shooting guard spot, Larry Hughes' contract probably won't be bought out and it wouldn't be fruitful for us anyway because he'd still count against the cap. Even though no one really wants him here, he'd likely still log at least 20 mpg, taking away time from Thabo, who might be a better fitting piece going forward.

Thabo's in his 3rd year already, he showed signs of being a serviceable player, but the problem is that we cluttered up the backcourt by trading for Larry.

-At the small forward spot, Deng and Nocioni have always been tugging for playing time since they came together in 2004. Nothing much has changed except that Nocioni's minutes as a power forward on the floor are probably going to be cut down. Not that he should play power forward, but the man needs minutes to be effective.

I actually like Nocioni more than Deng because Nocioni can shoot the 3 and isn't afraid to make moves. Deng is what he is, which is pretty good, but I'm not sure that his production is worth 11-12 million dollars.

-Speaking of power forwards, Tyrus Thomas needs minutes to be effective. Never been a big fan especially considering we drafted Lamarcus, and I do like Gooden and think he needs to be playing 28-30 mpg, but it'd be a waste to have Tyrus average less than 20 minutes a game for the 3rd year in a row.

In my semi-real ideal basketball world, we'd consolidate Tyrus Thomas, Luol Deng, and Kirk Hinrich into a young inside scoring power forward like Al Jefferson and put out this playoff-tuff lineup

1: Rose, Gordon
2: Gordon, Hughes, Sefolosha
3: Nocioni, Sefolosha
4: Jefferson, Gooden
5: Noah, Gooden, Gray

-Gordon putting up 22 ppg
-Jefferson putting up 19 ppg/11 rpg
-Rose doing 13/7

On offense It would be
...Rose splitting the floors and getting inside or
...kicking to BG or Nocioni on the outside or
...Jefferson down low.

On defense it would be
...Noah fronting the middle, looking to play that help-side defense
...Sefolosha playing a harrassing Scottie Pippenish-role on the perimeter

I think that lineup would be mandated to win 45 at least.

Ahhh...it won't happen, but who knows. I don't know what to think about John Paxson anymore. Summer's young, so is this team.