Because I Said So

Last night I ignored the Super Bowl (I know, whatever) to watch my favorite food movie, Because I Said So.  Yes I realize that it got panned and that Diane Keaton is better in so many other movies and IT WAS SUPER BOWL SUNDAY and all of that, but Because isn’t just a food movie (which I’ll explain in a minute), it is so very much about my family.  Being snowed in and unable to get to my usual Super Bowl haunts seemed like a perfect time to do some much needed thinking about how my changing traditions will affect my relationships with both.

January 2010 Monthly Reading

Following Nick Hornby’s example in Housekeeping vs the Dirt, and in an attempt to read more than the paltry 37 books I read last year, I’m going to start posting a summary of the books I read in the past month, and hopefully some thoughts/ideas about them.  These posts may also grow to include magazines, if there happen to be any ones in particular that I liked.

Books Read

A History of God
The Female Brain

iPad vs OLPC and the Ridiculousness of Tech Expectations

I think I’ve now used ‘ridiculous’ or some form of it so many times in reference to iPad and technology as to lose all meaningfulness.  It’s just that articles such as this one at Gartner infuriate me, as they seem to be based purely on enthusiasm and not reality.  I’m all for enthusiasm and setting fire to the world, and I am not at all a luddite, but let’s not confuse the purpose and function of technology for that of people and institutions.  Technology is NOT development.  It is simply a tool for development.  Nor will the mere appearance of technology lead to development (actually, if we define development as the rise in living standards, Jane Jacobs makes a powerful argument that technology can underdevelop or even un-develop).  In any case, there’s more about the post over at D&S.

Lessons from Other Blogs

I just spent an hour revising my post categories.  Just about anything with other 5 entries was eliminated or combined into something else, with the exception of Judaism, which is a category I’m confident I’ll develop.  I also added in school.  The purpose of these changes was to better reflect what I actually write about, instead of what I thought what I wanted to write about 2 years ago.

Links

Some articles I wanted to share from the past two or so weeks:

• Global Integrity Commons’ review of The Shadow Elite
• The other Obama, and the development power of incentives
• Lessons from China’s investment in Africa
• Ethan Zuckerman on motives in NGO journalism
• Apparently we need to find a new term for AfPak
• Chavez says Twitter = Terrorism

Speaking of Twitter, Bill Gates finally joins and we enter The Age of Citizen Philanthropy

Haiti

• How to help Haiti rebuild
• The ‘vacuous top and resourceful bottom’ – more from AidWatchers on Haiti

Tech/Networks

• Studying homocide in Philly as a networked process
• The New New Urbanism – the planned NYC of S Korea
• How Africans are getting the cheapest cell phone rates

This Is Just Ridiculous

‘Occupational Tourism’ – as in, touring the occupation in Palestine.

When I was at school in Williamsburg, VA, we had a saying around campus – ‘if it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?’  I imagine that both sides of the conflict are at least united in annoyance.

What upsets me the most, however, isn’t the tourist in-and-out mentality, but what happens in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs:

While the cause of the Bil’in residents is entirely worthy, the tactics employed during the protests are far more questionable. Every week without fail, rocks and other projectiles are hurled towards the soldiers by mask-clad youths, known as shabab, while not a finger is lifted by their fellow demonstrators to stop them. Despite billing the march as “nonviolent resistance”, the organisers do nothing to ensure the event lives up to such criteria, and by taking no action hand to the army on a plate the perfect excuse to fight fire with fire.

Many of the international activists come to the protest in the hope that their presence will make the troops think twice before using violent measures against the Palestinians, under the assumption that foreign witnesses are worth their weight in gold to those taking on the might of the Israel Defence Forces. Groups such as International Solidarity Movement attempt to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the aggression emanating from the Palestinian side, declaring that since the resistance is “Palestinian-led”, they are not going to tell the locals what they can and can’t do in the name of fighting the occupation.

Assume, for a second, that I am a complete idiot, (bc I must be if I don’t see the brilliance of this plan) and explain to me how on any level this helps the Palestinian cause.  The Israelis feel justified in attending to the protesters with teargas, both sides get horribly frustrated, everyone is riled up instead of taking the space to possibly calm down and have a dialogue and not a semi-armed conflict….

Yes, I realize everyone on the outside (which I definitely am, as I study African politics) says that dialogue is the best way to deal with this, and that there’s so much history and grievance on both sides for it to be meaningful, but surely having a bunch of Western students on their gap-year cycling in to lead such marches isn’t doing any good, as it hasn’t seemed to yet.

Thursday Cartoons to China: Tear Down This Wall!

There’s a lot of good cartoons out about Haiti, and all of the different sub-themes of that topic – Pat Robertson, the mess that Haiti was BEFORE the earthquake so lack of governance/infrastructure/UN ability to respond, how lucky the rest of us are in comparison.  I’d really recommend Cagle’s Cartoons’ Haiti coverage.

Since all my favorite cartoons this week were Haiti related, I’m left with just a couple others.  The first is the ‘Obstacle Course to Civilized Health Care’.  The second is the one I’ve posted, a rather pretty illustration of the hole Google seems to have left in China’s wall.

I was supposed to go to the Newseum this morning w several other YPFP members to watch Sec. Clinton’s speech on internet freedom and instead ended up watching it from my couch w plenty of advil and a heating pad since I somehow managed to hurt my back last night rocking out to La Coterie (really, check them out.  Well worth whatever pain I’m feeling).  This actually turned out to be ok, bc I now have the opportunity to watch the live-stream of the related panel discussion, whereas YPFP left after Clinton.

If you didn’t get a chance to watch the speech, check out @DipNote – the State Twitter feed, and also @JoshuaMarcuse – YPFP’s president who also had excellent Twitter coverage.