About time

US drone strikes could be classed as war crimes, says Amnesty International

http://gu.com/p/3jm4g

Interesting perspectives on opium

Plenty of contemporary evidence should make us wonder about the nature of the parent-child/ren relationship of our times. I certainly think I have a less artificial, more straight-forward and rational relationship to my puppy than what I see in most parents scrambling around, excusing themselves to their children. Take the local commuter train from Copenhagen Main Train Station to Tisvildeleje and you'll witness one little fascist after the other chastizing freaked-out parents. Or the worst ones: a pedagogy-parent softly respecting every utterence of the little freak as he/she raionally tries to guide the absolutely self-conscious monster to some worthy perspective. Interesting socio-cultural dimensions suggested on these links. Where historically children were little more than an inconvenient free work force, methodically abused, then, migrating towards children being a sort of middle-of-the-road sub-part of realizing the facade-parameters of successful petit-burgeois existence, rather unconsciously and preferably in the suburbs, we now seem to have ended up in the opposite ditch: parents completely morphing their selves and lives into around the clock subservience. Spurred on, perhaps, by collective guilt over what is perceived as the indifference of the past (i.e., 'we know so much more now of child development and have the books and dr. phils to guide us') , and hence, not least, by the massive terapeutical industry which, sadly, does not alleviate higher education from responsibility.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10395006/Children-are-the-opium-of-the-masses-says-Rory-Stewart.html

The worship of children brings only misery | Suzanne Moore

http://gu.com/p/3jz2y

True readings

Satirical psychoanalytical reading of “The Little Mermaids”

““First and foremost I want to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to be here today as a literary-critical-psychoanalytical-feminist to finally, once and for all, set the world-historical, critically interpretive, record straight by providing the ultimate, final, interpretive understanding of Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805-1875) fairy tale: “The Little Mermaid” (1836); briefly, succinctly, as is the founding principle for our SBSNCBLLI (Society for Brief, Succinct, Non-Contradictable, Bottom-Line, Literary Interpretation), the annual meeting of which, thank goodness, this year takes place here in downtown San Francisco, so there’ll be plenty of good things to do when we skip afternoon sessions to shop, chat, visit galleries, go eating, meet up, check out people.

First of all: forget everything you know about extra-textual affairs including socio-economic, historical contexts, biographical informative explanations about the author, weird language-communicative grammars of signs and signifiers and whatever the hell they signify, narrative irony, and solely intra-textual structures: this is ultimately a story about Hans Christian Andersen’s missing vagina. And not only that: it becomes a metaphorical archetypical myth about man-man’s hatred of his penis. He wants to castrate himself because he wants a vagina. Take for instance rodeo queens: biologically speaking they undoubtedly (perhaps not?) have a vagina but they just don’t know they have it. They are “”denying”” it because they have been forced into the male vacuum of the rodeo “”spectacle”” in which men themselves cry out for their lost vaginas. How else do you explain their riding on bulls, broncos, etc. were it not in effect an act of castration, a primal-scream for that which they do not have but want? Why would a man otherwise mount a tortured, wild bronco or spread his legs across vicious bulls to have his balls mashed in the process?

Scientific, audiological studies have proven that after half a year at the rodeo-circuit, male voices actually arrive at a higher pitch. And how would you otherwise explain “Brokeback Mountain.” Yes, it was a bad movie, but that only demonstrates the degree to which the myth has been established in our literary heritage, for example through the traditional, erroneous interpretations of our specific tale. This is not a story about unrequited love, about obtaining a human soul within a Christian universe, about the author’s personal sense of alienation, given universal expression and appeal, no, this is about the main character’s search for her missing vagina.

What is a mermaid? It is half a fish. Fish don’t have vaginas but they want to. Where does she live? She lives deep in the ocean in a gluttonous swamp of repression, by family, by all the wants destined to be so by the fact there are plenty of vaginas above, on land, in the human world. Does she really “”fall in love”” with the prince on the boat whom she sees when it is her time to swim to the surface? Or does she really “”fall in love”” with the image of the prince which symbolically refers to the “”human soul”” which of course is code-word for vagina – the only place of true humanity, also proven by ancient human, fertility rites. Clearly, this is the transformation she undergoes: from fish-body split into human legs revealing her long lost vagina.

I can substantiate this interpretation by analysis of an example from Andersens’s text:

“Presently they came in sight of land; she saw lofty blue mountains, on which the white snow rested as if a flock of swans were lying upon them. Near the coast were beautiful green forests, and close by stood a large building, whether a church or a convent she could not tell. Orange and citron trees grew in the garden, and before the door stood lofty palms. The sea here formed a little bay, in which the water was quite still, but very deep; so she swam with the handsome prince to the beach, which was covered with fine, white sand, and there she laid him in the warm sunshine, taking care to raise his head higher than his body. Then bells sounded in the large white building…”

There’s a lot of unimportant stuff here, especially the one about raising the head higher than the body as if the body isn't important. But this totally reminds me when I was a graduate student running around on the beaches of California with no panties on, smoking pot, sleeping with my professors, finding my own vagina. It was just the grooviest of times.

Sorry if I went a little overboard in this. It has to be kept short, of course, but I’ve got so much to say! It is just so damned important. When you have the right interpretive angle as I have provided it here, you actually don’t have to read the text itself, or you can just browse it quickly. The good thing about SBSNCBLLI is that you can skip all the boring details in texts and contexts and go right to the point which is what I have done here. Is it true there’s an art exhibit on Union Square?””


http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html

Note to concerned humanist

Let me pursue a different tack for the sake of good humanistic, critical thinking; 7 commandments of humanities-understanding to achieve congeniality and happiness:

(1)   No reason. The humanities have got no reason to whine. As far as education goes, we live in a science age. What is happening on that front is quite stunning, not least the speed with which it has happened and is happening and the kinds of knowledge it has provided. Leaves everything else in the dust. ‘Genome’ wasn’t invented when I was a student. No wonder society’s priorities gravitate towards it.

(2)   Nothing comparable. The cultural front, the humanities, has nothing comparable to offer. Even the fattest doctoral dissertation is mere contingent opinion when it comes down to it. Coated in the circumstantial vocabulary of other academic opinions at a given time sanctioned by its clergy. The effect being that it essentially becomes an exercise geared towards establishing a foothold in the bourgeois knitting-club that is the university world, i.e. clergy. Unless, of course, Plato can convincingly be understood as a contemporary. That would change the ball game. Which also is why we carry on.

(3)   What is not meant. What do we not mean by the humanities? Certainly not archeology, anthropology, history, sociology, although these are indeed very human. But to their advantage they all have something very tangible in their hands they can look at from different sides and measure (which doesn’t keep them from being considered a kind of humanities). Pride and Prejudice may be a hard cover book but that’s beside the point. What it really is, is something that tangibly does not exist; that’s where its strength lies. I am not sure I would rank ‘political science’ anywhere. (And ‘business,’ ‘communications,’ ‘engineering,’ ‘architecture’ and ‘nursing,’ of course, constitute their own, irrelevant cases, although some of them, unfortunately behave like bad humanities). Psychology is its own disturbing amalgamation of much of the above, but mainly bad sociology, that is, sociology infused by narrative methodologies better suited for literary fiction.

(4)   What is meant. What do we mean by the humanities? The closest the humanities gets to being useful is actually foreign language learning. But instead of being useful those professors can’t escape the language classroom fast enough. And for some reason the corporation rewards them, handsomely, to do so to invent obscurities and typically vocabulate them in even more obscure terminology. Most of it stuff that never reaches the domain of the customers, not now, never later. The fundamental problem being that if obscure vocabulary isn’t invented and employed, only the artificial format itself separates it from entertainment. As does the deliberately serious posture of clergy.

(5)   Higher-order thinking skills. Intangible formation of higher-order thinking skills generated by the study of symbolic expression: that’s the humanities. We do it because it is the promise of mankind. When we sit with all our machines, reading our genome printout with its accompanying annotations, we would be empty if we couldn’t interpret it within the framework of something intangible. (‘we would be’ – not ‘we would feel’ – the large majority is perfectly satisfied with the machines and the printout). Lower-order thinking skills: bingo, soduko, sports, voting, departmental meetings. Plus what it has always been very useful for: identity cementation (which largely, probably, is the real reason it is still around).

(6)   Amazing it is. Considering all of the above it is amazing how the humanities is being attended to in thousands of institutions across the land, even with a small presence here at Washington State Agricultural College.

(7)   Just be happy. Just be happy that anyone takes an interest in your field and that it is, sort of, a circumstantial requirement that you can negotiate. With a paycheck. And then try to make it relevant to actual experience.

Gosh.

Kim

How do we step in?

The article below ought to be taught from kindergarten up. It is mindboggling the amount of damage done by the gun craze. Stunning because so many Americans are sensible people. But apparently only half or less. As is, even if it were taught in schools, I doubt it would have any effect. Hence, the desperation: the world needs to step in. They do not know what they do.

===============

American gun use is out of control. Shouldn't the world intervene?

The death toll from firearms in the US suggests that the country is gripped by civil war

The Observer, Saturday 21 September 2013 22.12 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/21/american-gun-out-control-porter 

 

 

A man on a rifle range: 'More Americans lost their lives from firearms in the past 45 years than in all wars involving the US.' Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

 

Last week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company's concern about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the celebrated Liebeck v McDonald's case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's recommendation that drinks should be served at a maximum temperature of 82C.

Although it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company's chief executive, to go even this far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this planet.

That's America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard – and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe.
The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path (it is 40% lower than in 1980). If this perennial slaughter doesn't qualify for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does.

To absorb the scale of the mayhem, it's worth trying to guess the death toll of all the wars in American history since the War of Independence began in 1775, and follow that by estimating the number killed by firearms in the US since the day that Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968 by a .22 Iver-Johnson handgun, wielded by Sirhan Sirhan. The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics from icasualties.org, tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.

That 212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45 years than in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact, particularly when you place it in the context of the safety-conscious, "secondary smoke" obsessions that characterise so much of American life.

Everywhere you look in America, people are trying to make life safer. On roads, for example, there has been a huge effort in the past 50 years to enforce speed limits, crack down on drink/drug driving and build safety features into highways, as well as vehicles. The result is a steadily improving record; by 2015, forecasters predict that for first time road deaths will be fewer than those caused by firearms (32,036 to 32,929).

Plainly, there's no equivalent effort in the area of privately owned firearms. Indeed, most politicians do everything they can to make the country less safe. Recently, a Democrat senator from Arkansas named Mark Pryor ran a TV ad against the gun-control campaign funded by NY mayor Michael Bloomberg – one of the few politicians to stand up to the NRA lobby – explaining why he was against enhanced background checks on gun owners yet was committed to "finding real solutions to violence".

About their own safety, Americans often have an unusual ability to hold two utterly opposed ideas in their heads simultaneously. That can only explain the past decade in which the fear of terror has cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in wars, surveillance and intelligence programmes and homeland security. Ten years after 9/11, homeland security spending doubled to $69bn . The total bill since the attacks is more than $649bn.

One more figure. There have been fewer than 20 terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000 deaths caused by privately owned firearms. If any European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the first figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the State Department would be warning against travel to that country and no American would set foot in it without body armour.

But no nation sees itself as outsiders do. Half the country is sane and rational while the other half simply doesn't grasp the inconsistencies and historic lunacy of its position, which springs from the second amendment right to keep and bear arms, and is derived from English common law and our 1689 Bill of Rights. We dispensed with these rights long ago, but American gun owners cleave to them with the tenacity that previous generations fought to continue slavery. Astonishingly, when owning a gun is not about ludicrous macho fantasy, it is mostly seen as a matter of personal safety, like the airbag in the new Ford pick-up or avoiding secondary smoke, despite conclusive evidence that people become less safe as gun ownership rises.

Last week, I happened to be in New York for the 9/11 anniversary: it occurs to me now that the city that suffered most dreadfully in the attacks and has the greatest reason for jumpiness is also among the places where you find most sense on the gun issue in America. New Yorkers understand that fear breeds peril and, regardless of tragedies such as Sandy Hook and the DC naval yard, the NRA, the gun manufacturers, conservative-inclined politicians and parts of the media will continue to advocate a right, which, at base, is as archaic as a witch trial.

Talking to American friends, I always sense a kind of despair that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge and that nothing will ever change. The same resignation was evident in President Obama's rather lifeless reaction to the Washington shooting last week. There is absolutely nothing he can do, which underscores the fact that America is in a jam and that international pressure may be one way of reducing the slaughter over the next generation. This has reached the point where it has ceased to be a domestic issue. The world cannot stand idly by.

• This article was amended on 21 September 2013. The original mistakenly said that Edward Kennedy was shot in 1968. This has been corrected

A Disgusted democrat

Here is a spot on commentary for much of the unease generally felt - certainly outside of the US - with current US policies:

As a Democrat, I am disgusted with President Obama

I voted for Obama reluctantly, but never did I imagine he would become another Richard Nixon

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/22/democrat-disgusted-with-president-obama1

 

Jeff Jarvis theguardian.com, Thursday 22 August 2013 16.50 BST

Unfortunately, Americans in general do not seem to notice. I am not sure I could vouch for the title of the piece myself. The democrat-bit. For the longest time I thought that was the only option.

================================

On methods

I subscribe to a pretty straight-forward, uncomplicated pedagogy which you could call “graduate school,” “collaborative,” “communal,” i.e. basically consisting of just two components: material and discussion. You dive headfirst into it and hope you can swim. Obviously, the teacher has strapped on a vest. Starting with a concise, shrewd opening question is a good way to focus attention to a particularly tension-filled, or essential part of the material, which then typically, hopefully, catapults discussion into a life of its own, soon heading in a direction determined by participant interests, dependent upon the material and the guiding presence of the teacher. I consider this approach justifiably ennobled by time since Socrates sensed the Arcadian breeze on his forehead with Plato sitting giggling on the first bench.

Another element in my classes is the student presentation. This puts the student in charge of the material with inputs and inquiries from the rest of us. Obviously, group work – as described by Bean (cpt. 9, e.g., p.167) is a valuable variant in conjunction with the right material and the right instructions. Unfortunately, students are often too concerned with profiling themselves for final grade, resume, and future career purposes, for this method to reach its full potential. Our American cultural emphasis is not on co-operation either, so, you’re heading uphill. Many, probably most, other cultures, are stitched together differently. The pedagogy espoused by my childhood Danish educational system (as the message also was in society) had its emphasis, believe it or not, on communal concerns, so group work was an ingrained ingredient, teachers made sure to integrate individual brilliance into a communal purpose. (In all fairness, group work didn’t look terribly different from what I observe in my classes).

Let’s not leave out the lecture. It doesn’t have to last all fifty minutes. But if (excuse me: when) you really burn for something, you can generate a productive attention. Bean’s chapter 10 is useful in its discussion of many facets and applications of ‘lecture.’ I was surprised at his admittance in the Fishbowl-section on p. 178: “Pressure to perform well in the fishbowl motivates at-home study.” It’s my sense that our undergraduate system is more prone to hand-holding than pressuring. We sort of start already in the freshman year to wave a fond “farewell” to the anticipated alumni on the horizon. Cougar spirit and dressage is our glueful, cultural compensation for the protective shortcomings of society.

The weekly class reading-response blog I have incorporated in this course (and am using in my current UH 300) falls under Bean’s ‘exploratory writing’ (cpt. 6). I think it works very well as a way for students to structure their preparation, and also to think ‘freely’ in an exploratory fashion. It is important that the task is introduced as such: informal, so it doesn’t become a trial or ‘busywork’ (what an awful concept). For one thing, the blog registers the date and exact time of posting, so when a student consistently posts 2 minutes before (or past) the deadline, with, of course, ‘light’ comments, it is pretty telling – as opposed to a 3-paragraph, sophisticated posting three days in advance. I think, one must make a point of telling students that one does not look at the time factor but only gage the reasonable quality of the response; in order not to generate unnecessary stress and anxiety, associating the blog with some sort of public confession.

I have included my previous course write up on ‘learning’ below, please comment and suggest. Embedded in the formulation below is the intention to focus student attention to the necessity of being responsible for own education. I have outlined the ideal kind of preparation for class. Not that I expect of course, students to meticulously throw themselves into the task of procuring #s1-5 having sympathetically digested my gripping vision of pedagogy.


Learning

In my courses we engage in a collaborative learning model. Typically Honors courses are of a size and scope that lend themselves to such a format. It is a very simple and straight-forward pedagogy in respect of you and the individual, personal perspectives that you bring to class. It is a five-step system:

1. The material for a specific date is listed in the syllabus.
2. Please read the material beforehand carefully: write notes of questions and points you would like to make; do some research to expand on the text.
3. Come to class ready and willing to share your thoughts!
4. Go home and digest the class, think about whether or not your understanding of the material changed, was illuminated, expanded, or confirmed.
5. Revisit the issues again in the next or a later class when fitting; and/or discuss the issues with classmates and me outside of class.
   

In this manner our classroom will be full of impulses from different directions. Typically we come from all sorts of majors and backgrounds, while trying to establish an understanding of things that might be outside our normal or projected sphere of operations - and that is precisely the purpose of general education.

Is there any particular way to study the materials? And to engage them in class, pedagogically? I think there is great value in keeping it open, driven by, and occasioned by your questions. One could, formally, call it 'an inductive method': you read the stuff, have questions and reactions, and then together in class we try to pick things apart and reassemble them. We get answers to those questions; bring things together in comprehensive understanding. Beyond this, there are no formal tricks, nor do there need to be. You read the material and react to it: ask questions about any dimension of it! Then we generate knowledge and skills. It is as simple as that.

So, this is not a lecture-format providing you with all the routes, giving you the right answers which you then can retrace and confirm. Here, it is you taking on the text! And in class, your questions, and our discussion, will guide us to an understanding. I, of course, already have an understanding of the subject matters which I will bring to the table.

The Critical thinking guidelines and evaluating papers & essays can also be used as methods for how to ask questions to materials. Analyze, synthesize, contextualize, and form your opinion. The first times out we are probably going to miss a few pointers. But down the road, we will sharpen our tools.