I Stumbled upon this just a few minutes ago, originally via Metacafé, but for whatever reason I couldn’t get their embed to work. Here’s the same video via You Tube.
Paul Dateh is the violinist and inka one is at the turntables. New music discovery for me. Maybe it will be for you too…
Turn up the volume and enjoy!
You can learn more about the artist at his website, pauldateh.com
So, if you haven’t noticed yet, Google has published its “Google Zeitgeist” for 2008.
It’s a collection of the most popular search terms in Google for 2008 grouped under a variety of categories, thus providing an interesting look into our collective, global psyche. Often banal, sometimes funny, sometimes sad and sometimes strange, the Google Zeitgeist is definitely worth a look.
Take a look at the “Politics” section for an excellent illustration of how we use Google to get information rapidly: one day the “Sarah Palin” line is non-existent and the next, boom! it’s there (McCain names her as running mate) and sky-rockets above the other election personalities.
Then, under the “Around the World” section, I couldn’t help but notice two things. First, the amazing popularity of Facebook the world-over. And second, more interestingly, notice how often the word “Google” itself appears in many of the countries’ “Fastest rising” and “Most popular” lists (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, etc.)…
This means that a huge number of people in these countries are searching for “Google”, in Google.
Why?
Feel free to leave a comment for the elements of the 2008 Google Zeitgeist that you find interesting, and, well, keep on Googling!
I have a lot of work today and before I have time to truly write everything that I’m feeling this morning it will be too late, everything will have already been said. Nevertheless, I do want – need -, to take a few minutes to mark this beautiful morning.
Yesterday, on November 4th, 2008, We the People of the United States (if I may be sold bold as to borrow this famous phrase), elected Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.
On September 11th, 2001, the United States suffered what is probably the most traumatic event in its history. Our country was literally knocked to the ground on that day. Action had to be taken; but unfortunately this action was badly directed by the Presidency of George W. Bush, launching the country, crawling and injured, on a tenebrous path.
And all the things that Americans have always held dear: liberty, justice, the presumption of innocence, being a guiding light for other countries around the world; all this and much much more, started slipping away.
Although the wound of 9/11 will never truly heal, today is the first day of America’s veritable recovery from this event.
The people of America have understood that the time has come to turn away from sorrow and fear and toward hope.
In a few months, we will swear into Office a man who is determined to get America off of this tenebrous path and bring the country back to the light.
Surely, history will insist greatly on the fact that on November 4th, 2008, the Unites States elected its first “black” President. Indeed, this is, in and of itself, a profound and symbolic event.
But I’d like to think that the true victory is elsewhere:
Today, America has risen.
As I’ve already mentioned a few times, my work has really exploded recently and consequently my blogging activity has, well, imploded.
In particular, this is going to affect the relatively big project that I gave myself to do a chapter-by-chapter review of, The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby. I’m afraid the “chapter-by-chapter part is going to have to be altered to a global review of the rest of the book as soon as I’ve finished reading it. Sorry about that, but I see no significant slowdown coming in my work (and am certainly not hoping for one!), and sticking with the chapter-by-chapter idea would probably mean the death of the project.
However, do read the posts that I’ve already done to have an in-depth introduction to Jacoby’s take on the dumbing down of the United States, and I hope to provide you soon with a solid take on what Jacoby has to say in the rest of her book.
A synoptic and critical study of “The Age of American Unreason” by Susan Jacoby.
To read “Blogging American Unreason” in order, see my series page.
For chapter three, Jacoby plunges us into the period of the “Gilded Age”, A.K.A the end of the 19th century. America has managed to get past its only Civil War and the following period of reconstruction. In all, the country is flourishing, education is improving, and giants of industry, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, are everywhere.
One other major event has just happened as well: Charles Darwin has published his groundbreaking book, On the Origin of Species.
Read the rest of this entry »
A synoptic and critical study of “The Age of American Unreason” by Susan Jacoby.
To read “Blogging American Unreason” in order, see my series page.
At the end of the first chapter, Jacoby asked the question, “Why us, and why now?”
In this second chapter, she returns to the early days of a newly founded Republic called the United States of America to explore the roots of the country’s unique and problematic relationship with intellectualism and rationalism. Let’s voyage back with Jacoby to the period surrounding the beginning of the 19th century: The country had recently declared its independence from Great Britain (1776) and with the aid of several European allies, France, in particular, has came out victorious in the Revolutionary War and been recognized as a sovereign nation (1783)…
Read the rest of this entry »
The New York Times today had an article on the “SmartBike DC” program coming to Washington DC:
“Bicycle-Sharing Program to Be First of Kind in U.S.“
Great news! Glad to see America re-coming around to the bicycle (I just hope they’ll be compatible with all the Hummers).
It’s a good thing.
It’s a great thing.
But the New York Times left out something important: This type of bicycle sharing financed by advertising was first introduced popularized here in Lyon! (EDIT: Clear Channel claims (correctly it seems) the first of this type of system in the French city of Rennes.) It’s called Vélo’v here in Lyon.
Of COURSE, they mention the program in Paris, Vélib’, but let it be officially on the record that this type of rental bike was a innovation springboarded by Lyon, who’s and then the success grew to other major European cities and is now headed for the States. Who would’a thunk it?
Except for the occasional vandalism to the bikes themselves, the system works great. I’ve been using it for close to three years now. It’s a really handy way of getting around town, especially for those in-between distances, too far for walking but too close to take your car. More interestingly, the introduction of the system here in Lyon had a me-too effect with everybody pulling out their own bicycles from the basement to join all the people velo’ving through town. Lyon’s starting to look like Amsterdam. Well, at least when it’s sunny out.
The system works with bike-stand stations that are installed all over town. You take a bike out of a stand at one station and return it to another when you get to where you’re going. In theory, the bikes self-distribute throughout the town with the ebb and flow of people moving about. But one somewhat funny aspect of this is the “hill effect”: If you live in a town with hills, the stations on the top of the hills empty out but never get refilled, because of course, everybody is perfectly happy to take a bike and go down the hill, but nobody wants to pedal back up it. In Lyon, there are special Vélo’v trucks that refill the hilltop stations from time to time. This is human nature 101; the same problem has happened in all the cities with hills where a vélo’v like system has been installed.
But overall the system has been a real success, at least here in Europe. It will be interesting to see if the for-the-car, by-the-car and of-the-car Americans will embrace this system à la lyonnaise française.
From the Reuters Science and Health category:
“Experts say sex abstinence program doesn’t work“
To summarize, the article reports on studies and reports from medical experts indicating that Bush and Republican supported sex abstinence programs are not reducing teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) nor are they increasing the age when sexual activity begins. They also emphasized that these programs may be doing more harm than good by not providing sufficient knowledge to teenagers on how to avoid pregnancy and STDs if they should have sexual relations.
These health professionals from the American Public Health Association, U.S. Institute of Medicine, American Psychological Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend instead comprehensive sexual education programs, that provide America’s youth with knowledge they need to make intelligent decisions, including abstinence, concerning sexual activity.
Did you notice how this ties in with my “blogging American Unreason” series (see the preceding two posts)? Indeed this is a perfect—but oh how it’s a perfect—example of American anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism in living action. Check out this quote taken from the second page of the Reuters article:
“Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems ‘rather elitist’ that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. ‘I don’t think it’s something we should abandon,’ he said of abstinence-only funding.”
Did you notice how he doesn’t try to demonstrate falsehood of the rational argument the “people with academic degrees in health” are stating, he just accuses them of being “elitist”. You have there ad hominem anti-intellectualism combined with anti-rationalism. That’s bad enough, but then he goes on to pander to parents by saying that they know better about sexual education than medical experts do. This is political manipulation: I think it is safe to say that most reasonably intelligent adults with kids, when they think about it, would say that sexual education of their children requires the engagement of both the parents and the schooling system. Duncan’s panders to knee-jerk reactions in fundamentalist and uneducated Americans, and hopes that the others will just go along out of laziness. And note as well how he says he “thinks” that abstinence-only funding should not be abandoned. He “thinks” it because he cannot provide rational, tangible evidence of its efficacy and furthermore he is confronted with rational, tangible evidence of its non-efficacy. The poor thing.
“Thinking” and “believing”, and their diverse bed-partners are red-flag words; they mean that the person is speaking without knowledge and/or expressing an opinion (which comes down to the same thing). That’s a reality of the human experience and everyone not only has the right to do so, but in certain cases the obligation to do so. Nevertheless, we all need to be able to make the difference between opinion and scientifically-established evidence. The latter is not necessarily ‘proof’, and researchers will be the first to tell us that, but it’s already a much more legitimate argument than “I think”.
But here in particular, we have an illustration of anti-rationalism that is, in all probability, doing harm to American youth. When is America going to put aside its puritan anti-rational silliness concerning sex? Why are Americans (parents, in particular) so freaked out about the human body, and why are the trying to “protect” their kids from knowing how it works? The result of this bury-your-head-in-the-sand approach is a first-place finish for teen pregnancy rates in the industrialized world (be sure to scroll down and look at the chart).
Knowledge is power, especially when it’s about our kids and their future.
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A synoptic and critical study of “The Age of American Unreason” by Susan Jacoby.
To read “Blogging American Unreason” in order, see my series page.
In this first chapter Jacoby examines four elements in particular that are at the heart of the current state of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism in the United States:
These issues form a sort of circular and cross-radial effect of self-sustenance, each feeding the other to create a state of ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism.
Read the rest of this entry »
Wandering electrons: Opera browser and web technology the New York Times Le Monde (in French) Lyon (from mLyon.fr, in French) Science and Technology (from EurekAlert!)