Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from February, 2011

South Africa as IT class

Longtime readers will know that my teaching experiment here has been something less than a success. There are a variety of reasons for that, most of them having to do with my own failings and lack of experience, but a simple one I haven't mentioned much is that rural South Africa is, in general, a lousy place to learn how to teach. A friend of mine did Teach for America in New York, and while she is superior to me in most teaching-related qualities, it's instructive to compare the situation there to mine. Where I was entirely on my own in all respects—when I would ask the educators at my school what to do when the kids wouldn't listen, the sum total of their advice was: "beat them"—she had both colleagues with a deep reservoir of experience and serious accountability from the administrative level. This accountability, in the form of occasional classroom monitoring and close inspection of all required paperwork, would have been tremendously helpful for me. B

NOTICE: I am not in prison

Noah has an alarming post : Friends and family : I am still in South Africa. I have not been arrested in Spain for possession of a gun and cocaine. If someone calls you and asks you to give bail money so that I don't go to jail, don't believe it. Scammers targeted my grandmother earlier today but she is too smart for any of that garbage. If it sounds fishy, it probably is. I'd tell you if I were going on vacation (especially some ultra-sketchy place like Spain , ugh), and if I was dumb enough to get clapped in irons, I can wait in jail until I (or the State Department) can contact you personally.  If you do urgently need to get in touch with me, I usually have my phone, and international SMSs aren't that expensive for one or two.

Longtom fundraising update

I won't give any specific numbers, but suffice to say we haven't yet met the $100 minimum for actually running the marathon.  I think if I don't do that, they turn me back at the end of the race and I have to run back to the start.  That would probably be fatal. Remember, go to the KLM website , click "Donate," and put my name in the Longtom Marathon field, or write a check payable to "Kgwale le Mollo (US)," slip in a note that it's on my behalf, and post it to: KLM Foundation (US) c/o Bowen Hsu 461 So. Bonita Avenue Pasadena, CA 91107 Special thanks to Joy Keeling, who donated $25!

Collected links

1. The "securitisation" of the drug war .  Very sharp analytical framework, and not just for that particular issue. 2. Kevin Drum on the decline of unions . 3. And some rather staggering charts to go along with it .  Care to guess what fraction of America's net wealth is owned by the top 10%? 4. I can't see how this doesn't violate some rather important laws . 5. China and water .

Chicken run

Pardon a bit of a rant mixed with some theology. I have a quasi-mystical belief in a deity whose guiding principle, whose raison d'être , whose work and joy and life, is frustrating people in small ways. My father encapsulates this philosophy in the phrase "the innate hostility of things." Sort of like an emasculated Gnostic demiurge.  It is the force behind Murphy's Law, falling slices of cake, and the United States Senate. This deity has been busy lately fiddling with the electricity.  Yesterday, for the third consecutive night, the power died at the precise moment I was placing my defrosted chicken in the pot.  The little ice trap beneath my mini-freezer is a raspberry pink from all the blood.  But today, I managed to break a couple freezer-burned chunks apart and get them cooked.  You know what I did next?  I ate them .  We'll see if Yaldabaoth has the juice to give me dysentery. I suppose the lesson of all this is that I should become a vegetarian.

Watch me hurl myself off a bridge

This is the Victoria Falls bridge in between Zambia and Zimbabwe. About the best $115 I ever spent. UPDATE: The most surprising part to me was how far back up you come on the first bounce.  It's almost all the way back to the bridge!  I suppose it makes sense considering the physics of bouncing, I just hadn't thought about it.

Vacation news: Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe or, ZimZamBots!

Whoo hoo! It's about time, right? I was zooming around southern Africa for the better part of a month.  So, where to start? I met three friends in Pretoria, where we picked up a rental car and drove into Botswana. We stayed near Nata for the night, and drove past the salt pans into Maun to stay at the Old Bridge Backpackers there. The next day we went for a mekoro trip (a kind of traditional dugout canoe, steered by pole) up into the Okavango Delta where we camped for two nights. We went on a couple game walks there at sunset and again the next morning. Just being out in the Delta was itself amazing, and on the second walk we saw a large herd of wildebeest, zebra, and sesebe relaxing near a gigantic baobab tree. I've seen more numerous herds and rarer animals in Kruger and elsewhere, but the fact that we were just out on our own feet and not ensconced in a car made a huge difference. It felt far less like a petting zoo. We also saw an enormous leopard tortoise, gir

A bit of penetrating psychological analysis

I was reading some old XKCD and was struck by this comic, which depicts the refined, purified, concentrated, Grade-A cowardice that increasingly defines the male mind (not mine, of course, *cough*): UPDATE: I even figured out how to add the tooltip! (Meaning let your mouse hover over the comic for a few seconds for some extra goodies.)

A quick note on blogging

I often get asked why I write so many posts about US politics, or random science crap, and so few Peace Corps-related posts, or even sometimes about my jaded tone.  I got an email yesterday: Why are you always so negative?  You're giving the Peace Corps a bad name.  Focus on the positive aspects of your experience, talk more about your village! My answer is that this is my own personal space, and I follow wherever my random, disorganized thoughts lead.  I'm jaded and cynical because I value straightforwardness and honesty very highly, and I call it like I see it.  If you don't like it, feel free to direct your browser elsewhere.  Questions, comments, and requests are always welcome, but please don't gripe about how I'm harshing your mellow—I do this for free.

What's the matter with PST?

I just returned from pre-service training (PST) for SA23, and I'll be heading back soon. I had an excellent time for the most part. I really enjoyed seeing the trainees, and like to think I made some new friends. Yet the actual purpose of PST, namely preparing the trainees for the next two years, was in my opinion a near-total failure. The problems lay in three main domains. First was logistics. Basically everything connected with any logical process—transport, food, IT, and scheduling—was a continuous slow-moving catastrophe. Large parts of the trainees' food were delivered days late, sessions very often started late (sometimes 2 hours or more), and IT setup often cut into session time. Second was the actual content of the sessions. Trainees seemed to think that most of the sessions were a waste of time, and the sessions they did like were mostly discussions amongst themselves. Finally, some trainees (especially ones that had been shipped here from Niger after that

Whoo hoo!

For some pretty cliched reasons—that lose none of their force for being the zillionth repetition—I'm in an excellent mood.  Here's some Black Eyed Peas to celebrate! I'll be back to my usual cynical griping in short order. But first, some dancing!

Collected links

1. A look inside the bizarre effort of one Aaron Barr to take down Wikileaks, Glenn Greenwald, and ThinkProgress .  Creepy but really interesting. 2. And here's how the same guy tried messing with Anonymous and got devastatingly hacked .  A bit juvenile on Anonymous' part, but you can't say Barr wasn't asking for it. 3. What really causes runners high ? 4. 15 things Kurt Vonnegut said better than anyone else . 5. Matt Taibbi: Why isn't Wall Street in jail? 6. Bill O'Reilly touched off his own meme .  It's a perfect fit. 7. Radley Balko on another horrific miscarriage of justice .  This time it's some old victims from the pedophile panic back in the 90s.

Rape in the Peace Corps, ctd

Sorry to keep banging on this particular issue, but I keep finding things to highlight.  This Politics Daily post suggests that, in light of the rape controversy and other violent incidents in the past, the Peace Corps should be shut down: If we can't even protect our own volunteers in these remote corners of the world, what are we doing there? Although the majority of former volunteers consider their time in the Peace Corps to be a highlight of their lives (and would do it again) we've come a long way from the "ugly American" days of the 1950s. Besides being a resume enhancer and surefire pickup line, to what purpose is the Peace Corps today? Fifty years ago, ecotourism did not exist. "Lonely Planet " did not exist. Global Crossroad and Volunteer Abroad did not exist. Now you can teach English as a second language, after making contacts at Dave's ESL Cafe . You can immerse yourself in a culture, and put some muscle into spreading kindne

Rape in the Peace Corps, ctd

A women's issues blogger over at about.com quoted me in a post about the recent rape controversy : So I've been reading, researching...and learning that ABC News only exposed the tip of the iceberg. This tendency of the Peace Corps to downplay, misdirect, and sweep things under the rug has been going on for decades, and a number of women have paid for it with their bodies, their peace of mind, and in some instances their lives... I hope this goes somewhere because just like the women who serve in the military, the women who serve in the Peace Corps deserve our utmost protection from rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. If it's happening, we need to stop it. If it's being covered up, we need to find and expose examples. And if we want more women to sign up, we have to make sure they know all the facts, not just what looks and sounds good. I hope the Congressional hearings move forward. I hope the Peace Corps makes the necessary changes to protect every sing

A brief break from Larison's incessant pessimism

Over at Democracy in America : "I admit that I am more than a little tempted to rain on the parade and note that Mr Mubarak's departure guarantees nothing and that it is not unreasonable to fear a turn for the worse. There's a tiny, stability-loving Burke on my shoulder, and I'm afraid he's no devil. All the same, for now I'm not listening. Well, I did listen a little, but I've heard enough. It is partly due to my Burkean worries that I feel the pessimist in me should just stuff it for now. Whether or not Egypt flowers into a model democracy, whether or not Egyptians tomorrow live more freely than Egyptians today, today they threw off a tyrant. The surge of overwhelming bliss that has overtaken Egyptians is the rare beautitude of democratic will. The hot blush of liberation, a dazzled sense of infinite possibility swelling millions of happy breasts is a precious thing of terrible, unfathomable beauty, and it won't come to these people again

Collected links

1. The run-up to the Iraq War was unbelievably stupid .  Worth remembering every so often. 2. This New Yorker article on Scientology is really long but good . 3. The economics of POW camps . 4. Cutting WIC is really, really stupid . 5. Any case of sexual assault brings out the worst in people.  This time, it's Lara Logan in Egypt .

The coming human obsolescence

Yglesias writes : After all, unless androids are built to be deliberately crippled so that we can better enslave them, it seems like their existence would basically make us obsolete. Equality, it seems to me, would pretty swiftly lead to the biological extinction of the human race. Our cultural and intellectual tradition, I’d like to think, would have some merit and the androids will carry it forward. But most likely it either will turn out that it’s not worth building androids since genetically engineered fleshy people are superior, or else humans will die out in favor of androids. Long-term sharing of the world with a race of intelligent robots doesn’t seem realistic to me. Personally, I'm a bit more skeptical of true robots taking over.  First, I suspect (though this is not much more more than a hunch*) that artificial intelligence is a lot more difficult than many people suppose.  But even granting that, as computers get better and better at emulating human behavior, possibly

Book review: The Looming Tower

Up today: The Looming Towe r , by Lawrence Wright.  Summary: this gripping book is a look at the history and development of al-Qaeda leading up to 9/11.  Very highly recommended. The subject of this book is easy to discern, but amazingly unknown in the broader US population.  The writing is excellent, and Wright gives a deep and sympathetic account of al-Qaeda's underpinnings without losing his essentially American perspective.  Ever heard of Sayyid Qutb?  If not, read this book .  Nearly every page contained a revelation of some sort for me. Wright also goes into the infuriating story of the few intelligence officials who had some inkling of 9/11 and failed to prevent it, for mainly idiotic reasons.  I won't go into detail save that the CIA emerges as the main villain. Really, I can't recommend this book highly enough.  It should be required reading for every American.  Enough said.

Sean Smith is a cool guy

Per my earlier post about the Entertainment Weekly journalist who joined the Peace Corps, I actually met the man during my brief jaunt up to SA23's training, and I must say I was very favorably impressed.  During one of the sessions I mentioned my time in New York City and how the culture shock had been much more severe than coming to South Africa, and afterward he came up and told me about moving there from Eugene himself back in the day.  Hard to put a reason on why you like someone, but he seemed on first impression to be a stand-up fellow.  Charming and funny at the very least. Anyways, all this is just to underscore the fact that glib generalizations are easy to make (and in fact I heard a lot of them when people were first learning of Mr. Smith's joining up) and usually false.  Heaven knows I've done more than my fair share of that sort of thing, but in a perfect world each person would get equal consideration as they deserve.

Department of WTF, tiger mother bureau

I just finished World on Fire , and I've got some thoughts coming up on that, particularly with this wave of protests coming across the Arab world.  But for now I'd like to focus on something else: the author, Amy Chua, had a disturbing article in the WSJ not long ago where she outlined her parenting philosophy: A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do: • attend a sleepover • have a playdate • be in a school play • complain about not being in a school play • watch TV or play computer games • choose their own extracurricular activities • get any grade less than an A • not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama • play an

The Longtom marathon!

Back in the days of yore a couple South African Peace Corps Volunteers founded and organization called KLM with the idea of creating a scholarship fund for a poor South African child to attend Uplands College, one of the best secondary schools here, and they use the Longtom Marathon as a fundraising opportunity to keep their organization in the black.  The idea is to have PCVs run in the marathon and scrounge up at least $100 each. This is actually the second time I'll be doing this one.  Last year I had a strategy (if you can call it that) based around humor rather than the traditional earnest cajoling (see this post , which I still think is pretty funny).  It's fair to say that was a total failure.  I was going to trowel out some treacly guilt-inducing story, but my heart's not in it right now.  I'll work up some solid hectoring later on.  Anyways, what you do is go to the KLM website , click donate, and put my name in the Longtom Marathon field.  Any amount is a he

Collected links

1. Michael Lewis on Ireland . 2. The legal difference between licensure and certification .  It's fascinating!  Yglesias has been harping for a long time on how legal restrictions on performing certain jobs is usually just about reducing competition and driving up prices.  Apparently certification is a simpler and less coercive option. 3. The case for cities . 4. Can Turkey serve as an example for Egypt ? 5. Sweden is awesome .  Ever since I finished the Millennium trilogy, I've had a real hankering to visit the place.

SA23 training!

Today was my first day with the trainees, and as I was half-fearing, I sort of bungled my first sessions.  The issue was that the training manager had allegedly given responsibility for my first session (on something called PACA, Participatory Analysis for Community Action) to the language trainers, but when I arrived, they were expecting me to take the lead, and I didn't have anything printed out.  For the first session, there were luckily a couple volunteers shipped in from Niger who basically did the entire thing better than I could have.  But for the second session, the trainers had basically nothing prepared and we had to wing it.  It could have gone a lot better, but I think (hope?) that the trainees were sympathetic.  We at least got the main points covered. Once again Peace Corps' atrocious logistical coordination is starkly evident.  Their strategy seems to be rather than trying to anticipate problems beforehand by thinking hard about what sorts of things are likely

A thousand artificial suns

Light pollution is an under-discussed aspect of urban planning.  It is true that it causes damage to ecosystems (disrupting natural flight patterns and so forth), wastes energy, both from improperly directed light (meaning into the sky rather than at the ground) and over-illumination.  Even security lights are mostly useless , particularly the unshielded million-candlepower floodlights that frightened homeowners often favor. But that's not what really motivates my interest.  One of the few aspects where I think rural living is definitely superior to urban is that you can see the stars more clearly (as opposed to the pernicious nonsense about "rural values").  The human capacity for adaptation is very great, and the corresponding capacity for awe is easily eroded—witness the collective shrug at the exponential growth of computing power over the last thirty years.  (My SIM card has more memory than the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon.  If that isn't stagge

Is Wikipedia sexist, ctd

TNC adds his typically astute two cents : For whatever reason, I think Internet sites that allow trolling and aimless idiocy to run roughshod have a disproportionate effect on women. (Terri Oda hints at exactly that here .)  I don't know if that's because trolls and idiots are more likely to say something sexist or what. But I don't think the problem is aggressive argumentation, so much as its weak people saying these behind a cloak of anonymity which they'd never say publicly... Incorporating women voices isn't just a matter of getting a bunch of people with a different make-up of chromosomes to nod along. It's a matter of opening yourself to people who, fairly regularly, will dispute what you have to say, in ways that, initially at least, don't even seem credible to you. But often the most interesting lines of attack are the ones that seem preposterous at first glance, and yet stick with you. For my money, that's the real "strong debate"--

Collected links

1. More on the slavery and abortion . 2. Great parenting blog: Free Range Kids ! 3. Facepalm: D&D banned in US prisons . 4. Josh Marshall on Israeli hubris . 5. An interview with Jack Nicholson . 6. The Onion nails Republican attitude .

Freedom on the march

I’ve always found Daniel Larison to be one of the most challenging writers around. Witness this bit of acidic skepticism about the recent protests in Egypt and Tunisia: While the last thirty years have seen remarkable advances in the spread of democratic government and liberal political culture, it cannot be stressed enough that many of these advances are still fragile and reversible in many places, and they are also very recent developments that everyone has to acknowledge to be historically atypical. That doesn’t mean that we should ignore political change, or pretend that democratization always leads to a new form of despotism, but it does mean that we shouldn’t ignore the clear lessons of the dangers that come from democratization-as-shock-therapy when they are clearly relevant. And this : What has stood out in a lot of American commentary over the last week is an embarrassing giddiness about the upheaval in Egypt. It’s partly the usual reckless American enthusiasm for anything

Is Wikipedia sexist?

The NYT has a fascinating article out on Wikipedia's gender balance: About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University. Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation, has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015, but she is running up against the traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women. On first blush, it's hard to know how a sexist bias would operate. The big activities where sexism has been definitively identified in the business world, viz. hiring, firing, and raises, don't exist in Wikipedia. After all, there are by definition no barri