No, there is no such thing as "polite racism."

When I was young, in the days before there were, to quote Springsteen, "57 channels and nothin' on," you trusted the men who brought you the news each night on one of the three major networks. You just did; it was something ingrained, like sea turtle hatchlings heading towards the full moon. I'm old enough to remember watching Cronkite. Though Brian Williams' appearance in comedy skits makes me like the guy way more than his somewhat stiff anchor style - or is it really some sort of attempt at hipster irony - the times have changed. And the changes have not all been good, save a few things. One thing is the rise of The Daily Show.
For the below clip alone, I would like to hug each person who worked on the segment and Stewart himself.

The fear, racism, xenophobia, discrimination, violence and stupidity spins on and we've slipped backwards since 2001. Yes, blocking your neighbors from building their house of worship because of something somebody told you they heard from the Internets or from their cousin who heard it from a friend who heard it from Fox News, is not just stupid, it's discriminatory, and pretty blatantly racist. Oh, and, it's pretty damned un-American. Well, I guess it's not un-American according to your narrow, isolationist, bigoted conceptualization of the place, but hey. Am I angry? Yes, as an American AND a human being. I think you should be able to worship (or not!) and not have to worry about people tossing pipe bombs at your building. Silly me. I take that whole "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" thing seriously. I know, crazy! And, I love and am proud of what most of this country aspires (and sometimes, admittedly, fails) to be. Maybe, MAYBE, someday everybody can crawl out of their trenches, cross the minefields, shake hands and actually work together to solve the real challenges. I know - radical! And, these days, I'm thinking not bloody likely.
Enjoy.
Peace/سلام

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Wish You Weren't Here
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Why, yes, I'll hold.

Watching: the post-game analysis of the ESP-GER match. Viva, La Roja!
Reading: Cosmopolitanism by Appiah
On Deck: World Poverty & Human Rights by Pogge (gonna finish it this time!)
Recently really enjoyed: I Am Love
Excited about: Diving with friends on Friday

Not as exciting a match as I'd hoped, but Spain is on to the final Sunday, so it's all good.

I'm still on hold for my self-designed final internship for my graduate program. Heard back that they can't give me an answer until three months out, but my department says they need to know now due to their procedures. Note sure what will come of it, but I really hope it can be sorted out. It would put me back in my favorite place in the Middle East and (I suspect) give me a good launch for my post-academic life.

On the other hand, I'm having a hard time mustering in regards to my Fulbright application. Not sure if I am just burned out and ready to be gainfully employed or if I've just psyched myself out. I'm sort of running a parallel track at the moment researching ideas for either Egypt or Jordan. Both columns have pluses and minuses.

Not much going on really. I am just laying low and hiding out. It's what south Florida used to be famous for. It's a nice change, but I am getting itchy. I think I'm just feeling a bit on hold and ready to move forward.

Oh, and trying to find a place to live in Austin for 3.5 mos. If anybody has a room for rent...
Peace/سلام

Fight Like a Girl #4

Happy belated birthday, Em.
We had some cake in your honor. Red velvet, of course.
Peace/سلام

دقيقة, من فضلك

Reading: Nature Girl by Hiaasen
Listening to: The Rough Guide to the Music of Sudan
Recently seen: Manatees and dolphins around my kayak - awesome!

Yes, yes, I know. I haven't said a peep and there's been so much to peep about, as usual. I have some writings I'm working on and should get them up here soon. It's been so nice to have the time to sit and think, though I'm still trying to retrain and reclaim my brain from the skimming & scanning of school work. And I've been off kayaking in the lovely Ten Thousand Islands the last few days. Be patient. I'll get moving here soon.
Peace/سلام

Educational TV

You may be wondering what's going on in the live video embedded above. It's live feed of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that resulted from the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig about a month ago. Eleven men working the rig were killed.

I've already posted my opposition to offshore drilling. This isn't the first spill - how inadequate a word, no? - and it won't be the last. Someone on the news noted that if we were serious about ending spills we would ban shipping oil in tankers, since they are the source of most spills, which I thought was an interesting point. Though I grew up on the Atlantic coast in Florida, I've spent plenty of time on the Gulf. With family in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, I know some of the areas that are making the news each night. My own state is holding its collective breath since our economy is pretty much entirely based on service industries and tourism, to say nothing about our seafood industry. Since I've been home, we've already had relatives cancel a planned trip because they thought the beaches here were affected (they aren't, nor the majority of Gulf beaches!). We're still waiting word on whether the latest attempt to stop the geyser of oil, the "top kill", have worked. I hope so, but we already have oil in the marshes of Louisiana that likely can't be cleaned out (image gum in your hair), brown pelicans and their eggs coated in oil not long after leaving the endangered list, gallons of chemicals being dumped into the Gulf with no real idea of the long-term effects, and the possibility of losing generations-old family businesses. And to think, just a few days ago BP CEO Tony Hayward was saying he thought the impacts of the rig disaster and spill would be "minimal." For starters, tell that to those eleven families who lost loved ones, Tony. Tell that to all the businesses along the Gulf linked to fishing. Hell, go try to scrub all that oil off those pelicans flailing about, unable to fly. And it's only been about a week since the US government told BP to cut back on dumping Corexit 9500 disperse the oil, due to concerns about environmental and health impacts, and the company all but blew government officials off and just kept dumping, creating a soupy mess that was highlighted by a news crew diving into the mess with Jacques Cousteau's grandson this week. Add to that the fact that members of Congress had to demand BP loosen their control on the video feed of the spill and provide access to the feed, even during this attempt to plug the well.

To claim that the Gulf was pristine prior to this would be a lie. There are red tides, dead zones and all sorts of man-made messes. But for about a day's worth of US oil consumption, we gambled with all this and lost. And we won't know everything that's lost tomorrow or the next day...some losses will take years.

Again, I hope this worked. I hope they stopped the flow of oil. Unfortunately, just as people stopped asking about and lost interest in New Orleans post-Katrina, people will lose interest in this story as they do all others when the drama fades, but the story will carry on for so many. Just don't let anyone fool you into thinking that protecting the environment is a choice between jobs and nature.
Anyway, enjoy the show.
Peace/سلام

Sort of like going to Turkey...or not

It seems the nearby city of West Palm Beach is now a sister city (and undoubtedly BFFs) with the city of Mersin.

Hoşgeldiniz, Mersin. You're a lovely city, so don't let too much of the Florida crazy rub off on you.
Peace/سلام

Sand in my toes, water over my gills

Listening to: Celia Cruz; Los Van Van; Warren; old Buffett; Rhythms and Songs for the Orishas
Reading: On the Beaten Track by Lippard; Ecosystems of Florida ed. by Myers & Ewel
RE-reading: The Everglades: River of Grass by Stoneman Douglas

Good morning and salutations. Writing this over tea and toast before heading back across the street to the beach for a swim. Yes, I am back in the banana republic that is my home state of Florida for a few months this summer. Plans abroad didn't shake out, no summer classes to take and after a very long academic year in which I oh-so-typically overloaded, nearly three months in the tropics sounded pretty good. Awaiting word on where I might be for my final internship come January. This time next year I'll have finished graduate school and be moving on to who knows what.

For the first time in a long time there are no plans...well, few plans, for the immediate future. I have to be back in Austin for my final semester of classes by 24 August. It's an odd feeling and I haven't quite adjusted yet. I got to meet a friend's amazing baby girl last weekend. I'm reading and rereading for pleasure, kayaking, swimming in the Atlantic, diving, fishing, camping, gardening...all the stuff I've been cut off from for a long time. And trying very hard to just be. I'll let you know if I figure that last one out. Maybe I can figure out this "balance" thing I hear so much about. And, like so many others, I'm keeping a wary eye on the spill in the Gulf.

Stone crab season just closed. It's sea turtle nesting season. Atlantic hurricane season starts on 1 June. Supposedly, once you get sand in your toes you'll always come back. I truly have a love/hate relationship with this place, which I'll probably write about here since most of what drives me mad are some of the same socio-econo-political issues plaguing a lot of places.

Right now, I need to get back in the water and wet my gills.
Peace/سلام

11. 5,000! 3,000.

UPDATE: NOAA just revised their figures today in light of the discovery of an additional leak. 5,000 barrels a day spilling into the Gulf, or 210,000 gallons/day. Projected to make landfall in two days, despite today's burn off efforts. This is serious.

Shrimp and crab seasons are about to open in the Gulf. It's oyster spawning season. The Mississippi delta, barrier islands and wetlands are full of birds on their northward migration. Right now the slick is about 20 miles off the Louisiana coast, but nobody really knows where all this oil will end up. There's talk if conditions were right the oil could make it as far as the Keys. Today there was talk of burning the slick, but nobody seems to be able to answer what unintended consequences that might lead to, the impact on marine life. And, just like with the recent Massey coal mine disaster, there was industry pushback on safety regulations in the months leading up to this explosion. All of this on top of the already hurting Gulf's dead zone and red tides.

The Deepwater Horizon blew just after the Obama administration announced a plan to open more of the coasts to drilling. Certain groups in this country like to chant "Drill baby! Drill!" Damn the consequences and full steam ahead and what not.

11 dead, about 1,000 barrels leaking from the sea floor every day, over 3000 km of the Gulf already tainted and threats that, if they can't figure out how to cap this leak (about a mile under water), this could be one of the worst oil spills in US history. This isn't a choice between the environment or jobs, wildlife or people. This very much about jobs and worker safety. This is very much about coastal communities, currently holding their collective breath. And, yes, it's also very much about warblers, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, pelicans, grouper, jacks, tarpon, Mahi and cobia...

Surely we can do better.
Peace/سلام

Fight Like a Girl #3

photo: AP

Dorothy Height

Fight Like a Girl #2

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas
I'll be back in the Glades, one of my favorite places on Earth, soon.

Before I go off to collect dubloons in the sewer...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
That's Tariffic
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Pretty good description of trickle down econ. Of course they missed a chance to highlight the fact that in the U.S. the largest group in poverty are children, with the numbers for very young children (under 6) increasing rapidly.
Click on the post title if you have trouble with the embed.
Peace/سلام

Rube Goldberg & Selection Bias

David Roodman, from the Center for Global Development, was the guest professor for my Development Econ class last week. Great session and here's the post to his CGD microfinance blog (good read) about some of it including his fun example of selection bias:

Roodman said NASA engineers worked on this video. To which I say, "Excellent, but where are my Martian colonies and hyperdrives?"
Peace/سلام

Fight Like a Girl #1

Lalla Fatma N'Soumer

One That's Stuck With Me

From a little paperback anthology of American women poets found on a dusty shelf in a second-hand bookshop years ago...this one has stuck with me.
The Poet's Wife Makes Him a Door So He Can Find the Way Home
by Nancy Willard

Nobody else makes doors like a poet's wife.

If she made a revolving door,
summer and winter would run like mice in a wheel.
If she made a door for the moon,
the dead would cross over alive.

Each door is a mirror.

So when the poet loses his way,
crossing the desert in search of his heart,
his wife hoists her lintels and straw on her back
and sets out, feeling his grief with her feet.

She calls up a door that shimmers like water.

She unfolds her palm trees and parrots.
And far away, his belly dredging the dunes,
the poet hears his heart spinning
straw into gold for the sun.

The palms bow. The parrots are calling his name.

He remembers the way home.

The More Things Change...

Nefarious War
by Li Po (c.750)
Translated from the Chinese by Shigeyoshi Obata
Last year we fought by the head-stream of the So-Kan,
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan’s snowy slopes.
The long, long war goes on ten thousand miles from home.
Our three armies are worn and grown old.

The barbarian does man-slaughter for plowing;
On his yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but blanched skulls and bones.
Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,
There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.
The beacon fires burn and never go out.
There is no end to war!—

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.
So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,
And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms
Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns.