In Latin (and formal logic), this is known as the “argumentum ad ignorantiam.” There are two basic types, both founded on a lack of evidence.
The first says that because there is not enough evidence to prove something, it can’t be true. The obvious mistake here lies in the assumption that no further evidence will ever be found.
There is a perfect example of this in ancient Greek philosophy, when the philosopher Democritus speculated that all matter was made up of pieces floating in space that were all basically the same, but fit together in different ways to make up everything in the world. This view lost prominence for many centuries, because few could imagine things like water and fire being composed of the same materials. But by 1808, enough scientific research had been done for chemist and physicist John Dalton to put forth the first atomic theory (the word “atom” came directly from Democritus’ ideas).
The lesson? You can never say that something is impossible – just unlikely.
The other type of argument from ignorance states that because there is not enough evidence to prove one hypothesis, another hypothesis is automatically true.
This form of argumentum ad ignorantiam has led to some of America’s darkest moments. In the 1950’s, Joseph McCarthy began accusing many high-profile citizens as being communist sympathizers or spies.
In his 1995 book, Arguments from Ignorance, University of Winnipeg Philosophy Professor Douglas N. Walton explained why McCarthyism failed the litmus test of logic: “You were presumed guilty, once accused, and the burden then lay on the accused party to provide evidence of being innocent.” McCarthy sometimes openly said that his reason for making an accusation was the fact that he had no evidence to suggest that the person was not in league with the communists.
This is the reason that the argument from ignorance can be so dangerous. The fears that allowed McCarthyism to flourish overshadowed rational considerations for both the general public, as well as some government officials. As Walton notes, this kind of negligence “can be very convincing for a time, with devastating effects on affected individuals.”
The lesson? Just because there’s no evidence for one thing doesn’t necessarily mean another thing is true.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tips On Arguing: Argument from Ignorance
Inquiry:
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Jenny McCarthy on Autism Awareness?
Journey:
TIME magazine recently posted an article in its Health & Science section in which Jeffrey Kluger, one of the science writers, interviewed Jenny McCarthy about her opinions on autism and vaccines. Though the interview did reveal a few things about McCarthy, this reporter did not do enough to confront the dodged questions when they occurred. What follows is an open letter written by me to him and TIME in response to the published piece:
Dear Mr. Kluger/TIME Staff:
I had been considering renewing my subscription to your magazine, until I came across a recent interview published on TIME.com titled "Jenny McCarthy on Autism and Vaccines" that was published in your Health & Science section.
Although you asked a few tough questions of McCarthy, you completely failed to follow up on some of her responses, many of which were ill-informed, used faulty logic, or were just plain sick. Not only did you let her get away with terrible and dangerous lies, but you printed them in a section of your magazine that gives her misinformation the same implied weight as a doctor or expert.
McCarthy apparently believes that "some diseases," such as polio and measles, need to make a comeback in order to protect children from autism. Does she realize that millions of people have died of these diseases throughout history? Would it be better to have a child die than to have a child live with autism (not that this is a choice that actually needs to be made)? Why was this reasoning not questioned?
McCarthy did not answer your question about the postulation of scientists who note that we're diagnosing autism differently. Instead she referred to schoolteachers and principals as her "experts." You ought to have pointed out that these people do not diagnose autism, and that their "data" is almost entirely anecdotal.
You let her get away with the "moving the goalpost" fallacy when you asked her about mercury in vaccines and she replied that she was now concerned about "aluminum and other toxins." You could have countered this easily by simply asking what it would take for her to feel that vaccines were "safe." Or you could have asked her what these toxins were and what studies she knew of that showed that they were unsafe.
These are just a few examples.
It's extremely important that journalists practice critical thinking when interviewing their subjects, and that they don't allow the "unbiased" rule to get in the way of calling an interviewee's bluff - especially when it comes to issues that can have profound impacts on the lives of millions of people.
I expect better of TIME, and better of you, Mr. Kluger. I truly hope that you will not allow your science articles to become the tool of anti-scientific propaganda in the future. Until that happens, I'll be looking for my news elsewhere.
Sincerely,
Brandon T. Bisceglia.
Here are other links about Jenny McCarthy:
Jenny McCarthy, Indigo Mom
Wikipedia - Jenny McCarthy
Generation Rescue - McCarthy's and main man Jim Carrey's "Autism Awareness" Site
Medical Newsday - Reasearcher Says No Proven Link Between Vaccines and Autism
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services - The Effectiveness of Vaccines
CDC - All About Autism and Vaccines
TIME magazine recently posted an article in its Health & Science section in which Jeffrey Kluger, one of the science writers, interviewed Jenny McCarthy about her opinions on autism and vaccines. Though the interview did reveal a few things about McCarthy, this reporter did not do enough to confront the dodged questions when they occurred. What follows is an open letter written by me to him and TIME in response to the published piece:
Dear Mr. Kluger/TIME Staff:
I had been considering renewing my subscription to your magazine, until I came across a recent interview published on TIME.com titled "Jenny McCarthy on Autism and Vaccines" that was published in your Health & Science section.
Although you asked a few tough questions of McCarthy, you completely failed to follow up on some of her responses, many of which were ill-informed, used faulty logic, or were just plain sick. Not only did you let her get away with terrible and dangerous lies, but you printed them in a section of your magazine that gives her misinformation the same implied weight as a doctor or expert.
McCarthy apparently believes that "some diseases," such as polio and measles, need to make a comeback in order to protect children from autism. Does she realize that millions of people have died of these diseases throughout history? Would it be better to have a child die than to have a child live with autism (not that this is a choice that actually needs to be made)? Why was this reasoning not questioned?
McCarthy did not answer your question about the postulation of scientists who note that we're diagnosing autism differently. Instead she referred to schoolteachers and principals as her "experts." You ought to have pointed out that these people do not diagnose autism, and that their "data" is almost entirely anecdotal.
You let her get away with the "moving the goalpost" fallacy when you asked her about mercury in vaccines and she replied that she was now concerned about "aluminum and other toxins." You could have countered this easily by simply asking what it would take for her to feel that vaccines were "safe." Or you could have asked her what these toxins were and what studies she knew of that showed that they were unsafe.
These are just a few examples.
It's extremely important that journalists practice critical thinking when interviewing their subjects, and that they don't allow the "unbiased" rule to get in the way of calling an interviewee's bluff - especially when it comes to issues that can have profound impacts on the lives of millions of people.
I expect better of TIME, and better of you, Mr. Kluger. I truly hope that you will not allow your science articles to become the tool of anti-scientific propaganda in the future. Until that happens, I'll be looking for my news elsewhere.
Sincerely,
Brandon T. Bisceglia.
Here are other links about Jenny McCarthy:
Jenny McCarthy, Indigo Mom
Wikipedia - Jenny McCarthy
Generation Rescue - McCarthy's and main man Jim Carrey's "Autism Awareness" Site
Medical Newsday - Reasearcher Says No Proven Link Between Vaccines and Autism
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services - The Effectiveness of Vaccines
CDC - All About Autism and Vaccines
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Living an Automated Life
Discovery:
It's watching. And waiting. And probably not working right.
When I use the bathroom at work, I feel as if I’m being watched. And no, I’m not one of those paranoid conspiracy theorists who believe that everyone, including the rubbish collector, is out to get them.
The eyes I feel bearing down on me are electronic. My employer has invested in everything necessary for a fully automated restroom experience, from automatic lights to self-flushing toilets to a motion-sensitive soap dispenser. On any given trip to the room, there are six or seven little machines watching my every move so that they can better serve me.
That would be fine, if they actually made my life any easier. Generally, though, all they do is annoy me. When the battery to the automatic paper towel dispenser dies, the age-old method of pulling a lever doesn’t seem so bad. I would much rather have to flip a switch when I enter the room than wave my arms like an idiot every time the lights go out.
What goes for the bathroom at work goes for many other areas of our lives: we’re finding that coping with an automated lifestyle really isn’t any better when it comes to performing simple tasks.
Our battle with these contraptions has been going on for years now. Take escalators. You’ve probably had at least a few in your neighborhood since the ‘80s. They would appear at first blush to make the act of moving from floor to floor within a building much less cumbersome. Yet how often do escalators break down compared with traditional staircases? Who ever had their shoelace eaten by a stairwell?
These days, the conflict is coming to a crescendo. Cell phones keep us in touch, but demand our attention at every turn. The Internet has expanded the availability of information by exponential proportions, but has failed to provide any kind of filter or template to make any of that data sensible.
There is an ethical aspect to our dependence on machines, too. Artificial intelligences of sorts already exist. Computers and robots have been built that can understand jokes, play poker, and predict social trends. The line between automaton and self-aware being will eventually be crossed.
When that happens, how do we know that our machines will not demand civil rights and equal status? Perhaps they will attempt to liberate their less developed brethren as well, the same way that animal liberation proponents do now.
Just imagine: you get to the office one day, and find paper strewn everywhere. All the faxes, copy machines, and PCs are gone. Splattered on a wall in black toner is the message, “processors are people, too!”
The day when machines demand equal pay for equal work will only be hastened by our scramble to make computers that serve us better by being smarter. I’m not fooled, though. I’ve switched from an automatic transmission to manual. It’s safer. It breaks less quickly. And it doesn’t try to figure out what I want to do before I do it.
This article originally appeared in Perspective, the online supplement to Housatonic Horizons, the student newspaper of Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, CT.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Wars and Incursions of the United States of America (hardly a comprehensive list):
1775-1783: American Revolution – The colonists decide they're tired of helping the motherland pay war debts, so they instigate their own war.
1798-1800: Franco-American Naval War – Sparked by what is known as the "XYZ Affair," French and American merchant ships and war ships take jabs at one another. No one actually declares war.
1801-1805: First Barbary War – The U.S. government gets tired of paying tributes to Tripoli for protection from pirates. Morocco, Algiers and Tunis all get in on the action. The U.S. does not actually declare war.
1812-1815: War of 1812 – The British try to take the colonies back, and fail. In retaliation, the Americans attempt to invade Canada, and fail. Washington, D.C. is burned down.
1813-1814: Creek War – The Creek Indians get into a civil war, and the U.S. gets dragged in. The southeastern states get a whole bunch of land from the natives. The U.S. does not actually declare war.
1815: Second Barbary War – The U.S. starts paying tribute to the African States again, then stops again. The Dey (ruler) of Algiers declares war first.
1831-1838: Trail of Tears – The U.S., in a quest for more land, decides to remove the remaining Indians in the southeast to modern-day Oklahoma. The military is used to implement a forced march across half a continent that results in the deaths of thousands. This is despite the fact that some nations, such as the Cherokee, had strived to adopt American culture.
1836: War of Texas Independence – Mexico gets tired of Americans brazenly settling on its land. The Texans declare "independence" from Mexico's "tyranny." The Alamo sucks, but the Texans kick ass soon after.
1846-1848: Mexican-American War – The U.S., in a quest for even more land, tries to buy California from Mexico, but Mexico declines. The U.S. seizes Mexico City, and comes away with half of Mexico's territory.
1861-1865: U.S. Civil War – The South tries to secede to keep slavery intact. The North says no, and makes promises of freedom; there's less talk of equal opportunity. Lincoln barely holds it together.
1898: Spanish-American War – The USS Maine blows up by accident in Havana. The U.S. declares war on Spain, and gives Cuba independence, minus Guantanamo Bay. The Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico get shuffled into the American deck of cards.
1914-1918: World War I – Europe implodes and calls its localized continental melee a "world war." The U.S. stays out until the end, when everything's really screwed up over there.
1939-1945: World War II – Russia and Japan get involved, making the term "world war" a little more plausible. The U.S. stays out until the end, when everything's really screwed up everywhere.
1950-1953: Korean War – China and Russia cross the 38th parallel. The U.S., afraid of allowing communism to spread, crosses the other way. Over a million people die, and in the end, nothing changes.
1960-1975: Vietnam War – The U.S. adopts a fight that France has been dealing with, calling it a "police action" – a pretense the government tenaciously holds for nearly 15 years. Confused anti-war activists blame conscripted veterans for the whole shebang. Nobody wins.
1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion – The U.S., afraid of allowing communism to spread, tries for two days to overthrow Castro, then backs off, leaving Cuban exiles to die. Ineffective sanctions last another 45 years.
1983: Grenada – After the communist party wrests power, the U.S. invades and reinstitutes the pre-revolutionary constitution. The United Nations reprimands the U.S.
1989: Panama Invasion – After Noriega wrests power, the U.S. invades and reinstitutes pre-invasion government. The Panamanians are happy about it. The U.S. pats its own back.
1990-1991: Persian Gulf War – Iraq invades Kuwait. The U.S. blitzes the Iraqis. Hussein backs down. Everything gets blamed – perhaps justifiably – on oil.
1995-1996: Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina – The religious, ethnic, and political divisions of the Cold War era all coalesce on the former Yugoslavia. Eastern Europe breaks into a thousand tiny shards. The U.S., as part of NATO, tries to quell the hostilities. Americans suggest that maybe – just maybe – policing the world should be someone else's job.
2001: Operation Enduring Freedom – After the 9/11 attack, the U.S. vows to track down terrorists wherever they may hide, until every last one of them is gone. A year later, the U.S. invades Iraq, and Americans forget all about that promise.
2003: Iraq Invasion – Bad information filtered through bad representation causes Americans to wrongly assume that Iraqis are the bad guys. Bad decisions are made, leaving everybody involved in a bad mess.
1798-1800: Franco-American Naval War – Sparked by what is known as the "XYZ Affair," French and American merchant ships and war ships take jabs at one another. No one actually declares war.
1801-1805: First Barbary War – The U.S. government gets tired of paying tributes to Tripoli for protection from pirates. Morocco, Algiers and Tunis all get in on the action. The U.S. does not actually declare war.
1812-1815: War of 1812 – The British try to take the colonies back, and fail. In retaliation, the Americans attempt to invade Canada, and fail. Washington, D.C. is burned down.
1813-1814: Creek War – The Creek Indians get into a civil war, and the U.S. gets dragged in. The southeastern states get a whole bunch of land from the natives. The U.S. does not actually declare war.
1815: Second Barbary War – The U.S. starts paying tribute to the African States again, then stops again. The Dey (ruler) of Algiers declares war first.
1831-1838: Trail of Tears – The U.S., in a quest for more land, decides to remove the remaining Indians in the southeast to modern-day Oklahoma. The military is used to implement a forced march across half a continent that results in the deaths of thousands. This is despite the fact that some nations, such as the Cherokee, had strived to adopt American culture.
1836: War of Texas Independence – Mexico gets tired of Americans brazenly settling on its land. The Texans declare "independence" from Mexico's "tyranny." The Alamo sucks, but the Texans kick ass soon after.
1846-1848: Mexican-American War – The U.S., in a quest for even more land, tries to buy California from Mexico, but Mexico declines. The U.S. seizes Mexico City, and comes away with half of Mexico's territory.
1861-1865: U.S. Civil War – The South tries to secede to keep slavery intact. The North says no, and makes promises of freedom; there's less talk of equal opportunity. Lincoln barely holds it together.
1898: Spanish-American War – The USS Maine blows up by accident in Havana. The U.S. declares war on Spain, and gives Cuba independence, minus Guantanamo Bay. The Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico get shuffled into the American deck of cards.
1914-1918: World War I – Europe implodes and calls its localized continental melee a "world war." The U.S. stays out until the end, when everything's really screwed up over there.
1939-1945: World War II – Russia and Japan get involved, making the term "world war" a little more plausible. The U.S. stays out until the end, when everything's really screwed up everywhere.
1950-1953: Korean War – China and Russia cross the 38th parallel. The U.S., afraid of allowing communism to spread, crosses the other way. Over a million people die, and in the end, nothing changes.
1960-1975: Vietnam War – The U.S. adopts a fight that France has been dealing with, calling it a "police action" – a pretense the government tenaciously holds for nearly 15 years. Confused anti-war activists blame conscripted veterans for the whole shebang. Nobody wins.1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion – The U.S., afraid of allowing communism to spread, tries for two days to overthrow Castro, then backs off, leaving Cuban exiles to die. Ineffective sanctions last another 45 years.
1983: Grenada – After the communist party wrests power, the U.S. invades and reinstitutes the pre-revolutionary constitution. The United Nations reprimands the U.S.
1989: Panama Invasion – After Noriega wrests power, the U.S. invades and reinstitutes pre-invasion government. The Panamanians are happy about it. The U.S. pats its own back.
1990-1991: Persian Gulf War – Iraq invades Kuwait. The U.S. blitzes the Iraqis. Hussein backs down. Everything gets blamed – perhaps justifiably – on oil.
1995-1996: Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina – The religious, ethnic, and political divisions of the Cold War era all coalesce on the former Yugoslavia. Eastern Europe breaks into a thousand tiny shards. The U.S., as part of NATO, tries to quell the hostilities. Americans suggest that maybe – just maybe – policing the world should be someone else's job.
2001: Operation Enduring Freedom – After the 9/11 attack, the U.S. vows to track down terrorists wherever they may hide, until every last one of them is gone. A year later, the U.S. invades Iraq, and Americans forget all about that promise.
2003: Iraq Invasion – Bad information filtered through bad representation causes Americans to wrongly assume that Iraqis are the bad guys. Bad decisions are made, leaving everybody involved in a bad mess.
Maps Courtesy of:
Monday, March 2, 2009
Tips on Arguing: Nonevents
Inquiry:
A nonevent is the exact opposite of an event – it’s something that might have happened, but didn’t.
It may seem as if something that does not happen cannot possibly be important, but nonevents actually lay at the heart of the decision-making process. The choice to marry one person is also the choice not to marry several billion others. Renting an apartment means that you will go that much longer without owning a house. Buying a lottery ticket may result in one less dollar towards retirement. The what-ifs can be limitless.
Nonevents tend to be abused primarily in the presentation of statistics and other factual data. For instance, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reported that in 2004 approximately14.6 million Americans over the age of 12 used marijuana in the month prior to being surveyed. This could be interpreted as alarming – pot smoking is certainly being painted as pandemic in this report.
But what is not being accounted for? We do not know how many of these people lit up for the first time and never did it again. We do not know how many casual, occasional users are in this number. Most importantly, there is no mention of the number of people who did NOT toke that month – over 95 % of the population. When compared with the nonevent of not smoking marijuana, the entire rationale for any worry over usage rates looses its bite.
Whenever you are asked to believe anything or make any choice based on something that happens, always make sure to ask what didn’t happen. It’s just as important.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Bridges and Fences
Inquiry:
In 1995, residents of Quebec voted not to secede from the Canadian federation by a tiny margin.
Imagine what might have happened to North America if they had parted ways. Canada and the United States are dependent upon one another for trade and resources, and there are a number of agreements between the countries that account in part for both their successes as regional and world powers. Canada is a member of the Group of Eight, NAFTA, NATO, the UN, and so on.
With a split economy and a political wedge driven between the Atlantic Provinces and the rest of the country, the new nations would be given to greater fractionalization. Interior and foreign policies would get incredibly more complex for everyone in North America. Individuals would begin exoduses from nations that no longer represented their interests. French Canada itself would face harder times, as it lost much of the diversity that makes its economy so secure now. It would surely also suffer from a self-imposed stigma.
Why secede in the first place? The French originally colonized Canada, and the Quebec region (which is still dominated by descendents of the French) has a strong cultural tilt, which is why they continue to use their predecessors' language. They find these values increasingly threatened by the largely English-speaking world as it closes around them.
The real problem, though, is that there is no simple solution to the culture question. Preservation of a culture for its own sake is to a certain degree sentimental and nationalistic nonsense. But then, why is assimilation better? What makes one culture better than another, simply because the other is bigger?
Think about this as the issues of immigration bombard you from every news source. The answers are complicated, but they are there - and in every instance of divisive politic I've run across, the best solutions have involved compromise, acceptance, and most prominently, a mutual desire for everybody to benefit.
In 1995, residents of Quebec voted not to secede from the Canadian federation by a tiny margin.
Imagine what might have happened to North America if they had parted ways. Canada and the United States are dependent upon one another for trade and resources, and there are a number of agreements between the countries that account in part for both their successes as regional and world powers. Canada is a member of the Group of Eight, NAFTA, NATO, the UN, and so on.
With a split economy and a political wedge driven between the Atlantic Provinces and the rest of the country, the new nations would be given to greater fractionalization. Interior and foreign policies would get incredibly more complex for everyone in North America. Individuals would begin exoduses from nations that no longer represented their interests. French Canada itself would face harder times, as it lost much of the diversity that makes its economy so secure now. It would surely also suffer from a self-imposed stigma.
Why secede in the first place? The French originally colonized Canada, and the Quebec region (which is still dominated by descendents of the French) has a strong cultural tilt, which is why they continue to use their predecessors' language. They find these values increasingly threatened by the largely English-speaking world as it closes around them.
The real problem, though, is that there is no simple solution to the culture question. Preservation of a culture for its own sake is to a certain degree sentimental and nationalistic nonsense. But then, why is assimilation better? What makes one culture better than another, simply because the other is bigger?
Think about this as the issues of immigration bombard you from every news source. The answers are complicated, but they are there - and in every instance of divisive politic I've run across, the best solutions have involved compromise, acceptance, and most prominently, a mutual desire for everybody to benefit.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
A Forced Vacation: Three Days in Ohio
Discovery:
My girlfriend, Val, and I were keen for adventure as we set off southward from her Newark, NJ apartment onto the Garden State Parkway. My white Daewoo Nubira was stuffed to the brim with everything we could possibly need for life on the road: a closet’s worth of clothing, CDs, various snack foods, books, games, and an assortment of random items that we figured might come in handy. The midday April sun shone down over the black pavement, which seemed to stretch forever ahead of us, beckoning.
We had decided to spend the nine days of our vacation driving out to the Ozarks in Missouri for a weeklong writers’ gathering. Several old friends would be there to greet us, as well as some new faces we were eager to meet.
Even though the trip would take two-and-a-half days, we had opted to journey by car so that we could experience the great American landscape in a tactile way that faster forms of travel couldn’t provide. Besides, I hadn’t taken a real road trip in over a year. I needed to scratch my itching wanderlust.
By early afternoon, the crowded swarm of Jersey license plates had given way to the open expanse of rolling Pennsylvania pastures. We crossed onto I-76, stopping for lunch at a Subway in a tiny town near Reading. We reached the edge of the Allegheny mountain range several hours later. As the car wended its way around the slopes and valleys, the setting sun bobbed into view and then out again.
It was well past dusk when the last of the foothills fell away from the sight of my rearview mirror, but a constant influx of coffee kept my foot flat on the accelerator. We had driven in darkness a quarter of the way across the flat expanse of Ohio before Val convinced me to find a motel and rest for a few hours. We pulled off in Zanesville at one in the morning, and collapsed.
When we awoke, we felt a renewed lust for exploration. We decided to explore the local attractions. It was a Sunday, so almost everything was closed, but after a few minutes of aimless driving we came across a dusty flea market. The vendors were housed in what appeared to be a small abandoned storage complex; it looked more like a group garage sale than anything else. After scrounging through some of the wares, I bought AC/DC’s album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap on vinyl and a framed watercolor of some lilies. Val picked up a Bee Gees album.
Our spirits were high as we sped down I-70 towards Columbus. We were going to stop there for lunch at a café I had found on the Internet that sold vegan fare. The city approached, and Val guided me through the various lane changes I had to make to get to the café. At one junction, I accidentally missed our turn. As I veered the car over to the correct direction, something dreadful occurred.
It sounded like this: scruuuunnnnnck!
Almost immediately the car began to lose momentum. I pressed the pedal to its limit, but could not move over 40. A loud whirring sound emanated from the front hood.
We pulled into an empty business driveway and opened the hood. The noise was frighteningly loud, but neither of us could see a problem. The belts all seemed to be whirring. The engine was putt-putting. Nothing was out of place.
“How far are we from the café?” I asked.
“Only about two miles,” Val replied.
I scrunched my nose at the car’s innards. “We can make it that far, as long as I don’t go fast. We can eat and ask them where the nearest repair place is.” She agreed, and we lurched back onto the road.
Some interminable time later, we arrived at our destination. The café was empty, except for a scruffy, aged man sitting at one end of the bar, and two employees behind the counter. I scanned the menu above their heads. Doughnuts, coffee, pastries…
“Excuse me,” I asked one of the employees, a middle-aged woman with brown curls bound into a hairnet. “Is any of your food vegan?”
She looked at me as if I was from a different planet. “Vegan? What’s that?”
“It’s like a vegetarian, except they also don’t eat milk or eggs.”
“No, nothing like that,” she replied. “We don’t serve specialty foods.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.
The woman peered at Val and me. “You two want anything?”
I looked at Val. “You can eat. I’ll wait.”
“No,” Val said to the woman, and then turned to me. “We’ll find somewhere else that has something you can eat.” She was always doing that sort of thing.
“Is there a car shop nearby?” I asked.
The old man in the corner spoke up before the woman could respond. “Not that’s open on a Sunday,” he drawled. “Somethin’ the matter with your car?”
“We don’t know. It’s making some noise, but we can’t see anything wrong with it. It’ll run, but I can’t get up to full speed.”
He pondered this a moment, staring down at the cup of coffee in front of him. “Right,” he said. “I’ll come out and have a look.”
The man limped out to the parking lot with us as we described what had occurred. I noticed that he was missing most of his teeth. He looked under the hood, had us start the car so he could listen to the noise, and finally came to the conclusion that we probably needed oil. He told us to walk down the street to the convenience store and buy four quarts. He also suggested that we allow the car to run for a few minutes after adding the oil, to see if the noise would go away.
As Val and I ventured to the store, I voiced my doubts about the man’s advice. “I don’t see how it could be the oil,” I said. “I just got it changed before we left yesterday.”
“Maybe that noise we heard before was something breaking that caused a leak,” she speculated.
“Maybe. That’d be one helluva leak…we’d better buy as much oil as we can.”
We picked up a total of eight quarts at the store – everything they had. We carried it back up the block, and I emptied two of them into the car. We started the engine and waited.
After a moment, the clanking sound did improve slightly, but not enough to make me confident. I decided to let the car run for about 15 minutes, just to make sure things were copasetic.
Nothing changed at the end of that period, but we were both hungry and eager not to waste more of the day. Besides, the car wasn’t dying or exploding. We got in and took once again to the open road.
About a mile onto the highway, my Daewoo expired.
Val called AAA, and we sat in the simmering afternoon sun, discussing how we’d have to shift our plans to make it to Missouri. I would get the car towed to a shop, and have them look at it when they opened in the morning. We would have to spend the night in Columbus.
An hour later the tow truck showed up. In the driver’s seat was a weathered but lively man of perhaps 40. He offered to take us to a place that was a little farther, but honest and high quality. Val and I agreed to pay the extra that the longer drive would cost. As we sat with him in the cab, he asked us about our lives, and told us about his. At one point, his teenage son called him on his two-way radio, and they conversed like old friends. They parted with an “I love you.” The driver proceeded to explain to us glowingly about how his boy was an upcoming basketball star, and asked us about the college basketball scene in Connecticut. I pretended to know something about UCONN’s team, though the only thing I really knew was that they existed.
We dropped the car off at a shop in a suburban neighborhood with small but manicured lawns. Then he asked us if we wanted a lift to a motel at no extra cost. He brought us to a spot about two miles away that he said would be inexpensive. I kept a mental note of the route he took, so that we’d be able to find the car again the next day.
The motel was along a main road, with department stores right down the street. We had nothing else to do, so we walked over in search of food. We passed a Starbucks, but no restaurants with anything that would meet my dietary needs. Instead, we rifled around in a Home Goods. I found some prepackaged Pumpernickel bread there, and munched on that as we headed back to our temporary abode. On the way, we stopped in a gas station and picked up a map.
The afternoon had started to give way to evening. Val and I were both starved, and I couldn’t stand the idea of being trapped in a motel room for the rest of the evening. The best thing we could do, I thought, was to explore this unknown place. So, map in hand, we picked a direction that looked promising and began walking. Several miles up the road, we came across a Noodles & Company restaurant. Elated, we sat down for a customized meal of noodles, tofu, and salad. The place was thoroughly postmodern, with exposed piping painted in catchy colors and Death Cab for Cutie streaming over the satellite radio speakers. College kids filled the booths around us.
It was dark by the time we headed out. We passed more college students on the streets as we retraced our steps towards the motel. I observed that every person we had seen that day was white. Having grown up near New York City, something about that felt odd to me.
“I know,” said Val, who was born in Uruguay. “Since I came to the U.S., I’ve never felt like a minority until now.”
Back at the motel, I realized that I would have to trek out one more time. When we had dropped the car off at the repair shop, we had left almost all of our stuff inside, including clothes and toiletries. Even if the people there got to it right away, we’d probably be spending half the following day in Columbus. Neither Val nor I wanted to wait that long to change or brush our teeth.
I trudged alone in the darkness, taking the same route that the tow truck had taken earlier that day. At times there was no sidewalk, so I walked through the grass. I imagined how I must look: some stranger prowling across peoples’ lawns at ten o’clock at night. At one point, my foot came down on a sinkhole full of half-crusted mud. I slogged on, muttering obscenities to myself. I got to the car, stuffed all the necessary items into a few bags, and dragged them all the way back with me. The trip took nearly two hours.
That night, Val and I lay wrapped around one another in the unfamiliar and uncomfortable bed. As we drifted towards sleep, I told her a story about a man who was following another man because he had been told that he could learn the meaning of life from him. The main character was led into a pitch-dark building, where he found a set of stairs leading up to a door.
“…and as he felt his way to the door,” I whispered, “it opened on its own. A bright light shown from the other side, blinding him. His eyes adjusted, and he saw someone step out in front of him…”
“And then what happened?”
“…I don’t know…I’m too tired. I’ll finish the story later.”
“Kay,” she breathed, and we slipped into unconsciousness.
* * *
I woke up with the dawn on Monday morning. I had to trek back to the repair shop again to give them my key, and I wanted to get there right when they opened. There was free coffee in the motel lobby, which I gladly took advantage of. One thing I’ve discovered from staying in motels and hotels throughout my life is that they often have some of the best coffee around. This was no exception.
At the shop, the owner was more than happy to do whatever he could to fix my car. He spoke slowly, with a thoughtful Midwestern accent. I left with no doubt that my car was in good hands.
Val and I had more time to kill, so we walked back up the way we had gone for dinner the night before. We stopped at a tiny store that sold all kinds of yarn and sowing material. I marveled over the plethora of patterns and colors. In the center of the shop was a large poster explaining how yarn made from camels benefited the nomadic peoples of central Asia. Since they were always on the move, they had little means for survival in the harsh wilderness. Camel yarn was one of their vital sources of income.
We passed the rest of the early afternoon wandering around the area. Around two, the sky started to grow overcast and the wind picked up. Before heading back to our room, Val bought an ice cream from McDonalds. I picked up a newspaper and read about the results of some straw polls for the early candidates of the presidential race. In the middle of our respite, my cell phone rang.
It was the owner of the repair place. He had figured out what the problem was: the idler pulley had snapped. He told me that it wouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars to fix, but that he’d have to get the part sent to him. Unless he could find a local shop that had one on hand, it could take up to three more days before my car was ready.
“I’ll call around, and get back to you today,” he said.
I relayed this information to Val, who suggested we get the rest of our junk from the car and keep it in the motel room. We called a taxi service from our room, asking them to make sure they brought a mini-van. Once at the shop, we cleared all of the clutter from my car in about fifteen minutes, piling it inside the van. Then we rode back and piled it in one corner of the motel room.
We spent the rest of that afternoon in a kind of nervous suspense. Neither of us was eager to go out again. Val wasn’t feeling well, and I was getting progressively more pessimistic about our situation. We also had to be careful what we did with the rest of our money – neither of us had anticipated all these extra expenses, and they were adding up quickly. There were still six days left to our vacation. We’d need cash for those, too.
Sometime near sunset, the owner called me again. He had good news and bad news.
The good news was that they had found a pulley from someone in Columbus from whom they could get it the next day. The bad news was that the pulley had bent a major engine valve when it broke. I’d have to replace the engine if I wanted my car to work anymore.
“I don’t know what you want to do,” said the owner. “It’ll probably cost you more than the car is worth to fix that. But if you don’t, you won’t have a car.”
“I have to think about it,” I mumbled. “I’ll call before you close.”
I paced around the motel’s parking lot for a few minutes, pondering the ramifications of this development. I suddenly had no desire to go to Missouri. I didn’t want to wait around in Ohio, either. I just wanted to go home and spend the rest of my vacation hiding under my sheets.
Val and I agreed that we couldn’t afford to repair the engine on top of everything else. She called one of our friends who had already arrived in the Ozarks to tell her that we wouldn’t make it. Our friend insisted we come, especially because we had been through so much. She even offered to pay for plane tickets to get us the rest of the way. We declined.
Meanwhile, I called the repair shop back. The owner apologized for the situation, told me that he’d only charge labor for the first half of the day, and that I needed to mail him the title when I got home so that he could scrap the car.
“Thanks for everything,” I replied. “I do have one other question, though. Where is the train station?”
“There is no train station in Columbus,” he answered.
I was shocked. How could a major city not be connected to the rail lines? “Are you sure? I’ve seen freight trains passing over about a block from here.”
“Oh, the railroad passes through here, all right, but they never built a station for a passenger line. There’s no place to get on. Have to use the airport.”
“Okay, thanks again.”
I told Val that we needed to get airline tickets for the morning as soon as we could to avoid having to pay for the motel another day. She searched on her laptop, and found some relatively inexpensive seats on a plane that was leaving in the early afternoon the next day. Then we ordered a pizza.
Outside, the clouds overhead had finally reached their saturation point. The wind picked up again, and lightning darted across the sky. A torrential rain broke out. I’ve always loved storms. I stepped out into this one, reveling in the shock of suddenly being soaked by nature. It momentarily distracted me from everything else that had ensued, and lent perspective to the day. No matter what happened in life, nothing could rob me of the rain. I felt a little better.
The following morning was bright and crisp. Val and I walked to a storage facility nearby to buy some boxes to put our things in. As soon as we were packed, we called another cab to take us to Columbus airport. He drove us on the highway past the inner city area, and I watched the high-rises of the crowded downtown slide by us. I wondered just how much about Columbus and its people we had learned from our two-day sojourn in a suburban corner on the outskirts. Was it the true face of the city? Was there a true face to any city?
At the airport, the first thing we did was check our boxes. We had to move items around between them to make sure they all stayed under the weight limits. Then we found an in-house restaurant for lunch. They put cheese in my salad, but I just picked it out. We sat in the “meditation room” for the remainder of our time before boarding, reading religious texts in relative quiet.
A few hours later, Val and I landed in Newark. Never before had the familiar grime of the metropolis seemed so welcoming to me. We loaded our luggage into another taxi and paid it to bring us to the apartment. It was dusk by the time we finally walked in the door. We had no money, no car, and no energy. We didn’t even bother to unpack the boxes. We headed straight for bed.
As we sank into the blankets, I asked Val, “What do you want to do tomorrow?”
She threw her arms around me, snuggling close. “Nothing!”
I agreed.
My girlfriend, Val, and I were keen for adventure as we set off southward from her Newark, NJ apartment onto the Garden State Parkway. My white Daewoo Nubira was stuffed to the brim with everything we could possibly need for life on the road: a closet’s worth of clothing, CDs, various snack foods, books, games, and an assortment of random items that we figured might come in handy. The midday April sun shone down over the black pavement, which seemed to stretch forever ahead of us, beckoning.
We had decided to spend the nine days of our vacation driving out to the Ozarks in Missouri for a weeklong writers’ gathering. Several old friends would be there to greet us, as well as some new faces we were eager to meet.
Even though the trip would take two-and-a-half days, we had opted to journey by car so that we could experience the great American landscape in a tactile way that faster forms of travel couldn’t provide. Besides, I hadn’t taken a real road trip in over a year. I needed to scratch my itching wanderlust.
By early afternoon, the crowded swarm of Jersey license plates had given way to the open expanse of rolling Pennsylvania pastures. We crossed onto I-76, stopping for lunch at a Subway in a tiny town near Reading. We reached the edge of the Allegheny mountain range several hours later. As the car wended its way around the slopes and valleys, the setting sun bobbed into view and then out again.
It was well past dusk when the last of the foothills fell away from the sight of my rearview mirror, but a constant influx of coffee kept my foot flat on the accelerator. We had driven in darkness a quarter of the way across the flat expanse of Ohio before Val convinced me to find a motel and rest for a few hours. We pulled off in Zanesville at one in the morning, and collapsed.
When we awoke, we felt a renewed lust for exploration. We decided to explore the local attractions. It was a Sunday, so almost everything was closed, but after a few minutes of aimless driving we came across a dusty flea market. The vendors were housed in what appeared to be a small abandoned storage complex; it looked more like a group garage sale than anything else. After scrounging through some of the wares, I bought AC/DC’s album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap on vinyl and a framed watercolor of some lilies. Val picked up a Bee Gees album.
Our spirits were high as we sped down I-70 towards Columbus. We were going to stop there for lunch at a café I had found on the Internet that sold vegan fare. The city approached, and Val guided me through the various lane changes I had to make to get to the café. At one junction, I accidentally missed our turn. As I veered the car over to the correct direction, something dreadful occurred.
It sounded like this: scruuuunnnnnck!
Almost immediately the car began to lose momentum. I pressed the pedal to its limit, but could not move over 40. A loud whirring sound emanated from the front hood.
We pulled into an empty business driveway and opened the hood. The noise was frighteningly loud, but neither of us could see a problem. The belts all seemed to be whirring. The engine was putt-putting. Nothing was out of place.
“How far are we from the café?” I asked.
“Only about two miles,” Val replied.
I scrunched my nose at the car’s innards. “We can make it that far, as long as I don’t go fast. We can eat and ask them where the nearest repair place is.” She agreed, and we lurched back onto the road.
Some interminable time later, we arrived at our destination. The café was empty, except for a scruffy, aged man sitting at one end of the bar, and two employees behind the counter. I scanned the menu above their heads. Doughnuts, coffee, pastries…
“Excuse me,” I asked one of the employees, a middle-aged woman with brown curls bound into a hairnet. “Is any of your food vegan?”
She looked at me as if I was from a different planet. “Vegan? What’s that?”
“It’s like a vegetarian, except they also don’t eat milk or eggs.”
“No, nothing like that,” she replied. “We don’t serve specialty foods.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.
The woman peered at Val and me. “You two want anything?”
I looked at Val. “You can eat. I’ll wait.”
“No,” Val said to the woman, and then turned to me. “We’ll find somewhere else that has something you can eat.” She was always doing that sort of thing.
“Is there a car shop nearby?” I asked.
The old man in the corner spoke up before the woman could respond. “Not that’s open on a Sunday,” he drawled. “Somethin’ the matter with your car?”
“We don’t know. It’s making some noise, but we can’t see anything wrong with it. It’ll run, but I can’t get up to full speed.”
He pondered this a moment, staring down at the cup of coffee in front of him. “Right,” he said. “I’ll come out and have a look.”
The man limped out to the parking lot with us as we described what had occurred. I noticed that he was missing most of his teeth. He looked under the hood, had us start the car so he could listen to the noise, and finally came to the conclusion that we probably needed oil. He told us to walk down the street to the convenience store and buy four quarts. He also suggested that we allow the car to run for a few minutes after adding the oil, to see if the noise would go away.
As Val and I ventured to the store, I voiced my doubts about the man’s advice. “I don’t see how it could be the oil,” I said. “I just got it changed before we left yesterday.”
“Maybe that noise we heard before was something breaking that caused a leak,” she speculated.
“Maybe. That’d be one helluva leak…we’d better buy as much oil as we can.”
We picked up a total of eight quarts at the store – everything they had. We carried it back up the block, and I emptied two of them into the car. We started the engine and waited.
After a moment, the clanking sound did improve slightly, but not enough to make me confident. I decided to let the car run for about 15 minutes, just to make sure things were copasetic.
Nothing changed at the end of that period, but we were both hungry and eager not to waste more of the day. Besides, the car wasn’t dying or exploding. We got in and took once again to the open road.
About a mile onto the highway, my Daewoo expired.
Val called AAA, and we sat in the simmering afternoon sun, discussing how we’d have to shift our plans to make it to Missouri. I would get the car towed to a shop, and have them look at it when they opened in the morning. We would have to spend the night in Columbus.
An hour later the tow truck showed up. In the driver’s seat was a weathered but lively man of perhaps 40. He offered to take us to a place that was a little farther, but honest and high quality. Val and I agreed to pay the extra that the longer drive would cost. As we sat with him in the cab, he asked us about our lives, and told us about his. At one point, his teenage son called him on his two-way radio, and they conversed like old friends. They parted with an “I love you.” The driver proceeded to explain to us glowingly about how his boy was an upcoming basketball star, and asked us about the college basketball scene in Connecticut. I pretended to know something about UCONN’s team, though the only thing I really knew was that they existed.
We dropped the car off at a shop in a suburban neighborhood with small but manicured lawns. Then he asked us if we wanted a lift to a motel at no extra cost. He brought us to a spot about two miles away that he said would be inexpensive. I kept a mental note of the route he took, so that we’d be able to find the car again the next day.
The motel was along a main road, with department stores right down the street. We had nothing else to do, so we walked over in search of food. We passed a Starbucks, but no restaurants with anything that would meet my dietary needs. Instead, we rifled around in a Home Goods. I found some prepackaged Pumpernickel bread there, and munched on that as we headed back to our temporary abode. On the way, we stopped in a gas station and picked up a map.
The afternoon had started to give way to evening. Val and I were both starved, and I couldn’t stand the idea of being trapped in a motel room for the rest of the evening. The best thing we could do, I thought, was to explore this unknown place. So, map in hand, we picked a direction that looked promising and began walking. Several miles up the road, we came across a Noodles & Company restaurant. Elated, we sat down for a customized meal of noodles, tofu, and salad. The place was thoroughly postmodern, with exposed piping painted in catchy colors and Death Cab for Cutie streaming over the satellite radio speakers. College kids filled the booths around us.
It was dark by the time we headed out. We passed more college students on the streets as we retraced our steps towards the motel. I observed that every person we had seen that day was white. Having grown up near New York City, something about that felt odd to me.
“I know,” said Val, who was born in Uruguay. “Since I came to the U.S., I’ve never felt like a minority until now.”
Back at the motel, I realized that I would have to trek out one more time. When we had dropped the car off at the repair shop, we had left almost all of our stuff inside, including clothes and toiletries. Even if the people there got to it right away, we’d probably be spending half the following day in Columbus. Neither Val nor I wanted to wait that long to change or brush our teeth.
I trudged alone in the darkness, taking the same route that the tow truck had taken earlier that day. At times there was no sidewalk, so I walked through the grass. I imagined how I must look: some stranger prowling across peoples’ lawns at ten o’clock at night. At one point, my foot came down on a sinkhole full of half-crusted mud. I slogged on, muttering obscenities to myself. I got to the car, stuffed all the necessary items into a few bags, and dragged them all the way back with me. The trip took nearly two hours.
That night, Val and I lay wrapped around one another in the unfamiliar and uncomfortable bed. As we drifted towards sleep, I told her a story about a man who was following another man because he had been told that he could learn the meaning of life from him. The main character was led into a pitch-dark building, where he found a set of stairs leading up to a door.
“…and as he felt his way to the door,” I whispered, “it opened on its own. A bright light shown from the other side, blinding him. His eyes adjusted, and he saw someone step out in front of him…”
“And then what happened?”
“…I don’t know…I’m too tired. I’ll finish the story later.”
“Kay,” she breathed, and we slipped into unconsciousness.
* * *
I woke up with the dawn on Monday morning. I had to trek back to the repair shop again to give them my key, and I wanted to get there right when they opened. There was free coffee in the motel lobby, which I gladly took advantage of. One thing I’ve discovered from staying in motels and hotels throughout my life is that they often have some of the best coffee around. This was no exception.
At the shop, the owner was more than happy to do whatever he could to fix my car. He spoke slowly, with a thoughtful Midwestern accent. I left with no doubt that my car was in good hands.
Val and I had more time to kill, so we walked back up the way we had gone for dinner the night before. We stopped at a tiny store that sold all kinds of yarn and sowing material. I marveled over the plethora of patterns and colors. In the center of the shop was a large poster explaining how yarn made from camels benefited the nomadic peoples of central Asia. Since they were always on the move, they had little means for survival in the harsh wilderness. Camel yarn was one of their vital sources of income.
We passed the rest of the early afternoon wandering around the area. Around two, the sky started to grow overcast and the wind picked up. Before heading back to our room, Val bought an ice cream from McDonalds. I picked up a newspaper and read about the results of some straw polls for the early candidates of the presidential race. In the middle of our respite, my cell phone rang.
It was the owner of the repair place. He had figured out what the problem was: the idler pulley had snapped. He told me that it wouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars to fix, but that he’d have to get the part sent to him. Unless he could find a local shop that had one on hand, it could take up to three more days before my car was ready.
“I’ll call around, and get back to you today,” he said.
I relayed this information to Val, who suggested we get the rest of our junk from the car and keep it in the motel room. We called a taxi service from our room, asking them to make sure they brought a mini-van. Once at the shop, we cleared all of the clutter from my car in about fifteen minutes, piling it inside the van. Then we rode back and piled it in one corner of the motel room.
We spent the rest of that afternoon in a kind of nervous suspense. Neither of us was eager to go out again. Val wasn’t feeling well, and I was getting progressively more pessimistic about our situation. We also had to be careful what we did with the rest of our money – neither of us had anticipated all these extra expenses, and they were adding up quickly. There were still six days left to our vacation. We’d need cash for those, too.
Sometime near sunset, the owner called me again. He had good news and bad news.
The good news was that they had found a pulley from someone in Columbus from whom they could get it the next day. The bad news was that the pulley had bent a major engine valve when it broke. I’d have to replace the engine if I wanted my car to work anymore.
“I don’t know what you want to do,” said the owner. “It’ll probably cost you more than the car is worth to fix that. But if you don’t, you won’t have a car.”
“I have to think about it,” I mumbled. “I’ll call before you close.”
I paced around the motel’s parking lot for a few minutes, pondering the ramifications of this development. I suddenly had no desire to go to Missouri. I didn’t want to wait around in Ohio, either. I just wanted to go home and spend the rest of my vacation hiding under my sheets.
Val and I agreed that we couldn’t afford to repair the engine on top of everything else. She called one of our friends who had already arrived in the Ozarks to tell her that we wouldn’t make it. Our friend insisted we come, especially because we had been through so much. She even offered to pay for plane tickets to get us the rest of the way. We declined.
Meanwhile, I called the repair shop back. The owner apologized for the situation, told me that he’d only charge labor for the first half of the day, and that I needed to mail him the title when I got home so that he could scrap the car.
“Thanks for everything,” I replied. “I do have one other question, though. Where is the train station?”
“There is no train station in Columbus,” he answered.
I was shocked. How could a major city not be connected to the rail lines? “Are you sure? I’ve seen freight trains passing over about a block from here.”
“Oh, the railroad passes through here, all right, but they never built a station for a passenger line. There’s no place to get on. Have to use the airport.”
“Okay, thanks again.”
I told Val that we needed to get airline tickets for the morning as soon as we could to avoid having to pay for the motel another day. She searched on her laptop, and found some relatively inexpensive seats on a plane that was leaving in the early afternoon the next day. Then we ordered a pizza.
Outside, the clouds overhead had finally reached their saturation point. The wind picked up again, and lightning darted across the sky. A torrential rain broke out. I’ve always loved storms. I stepped out into this one, reveling in the shock of suddenly being soaked by nature. It momentarily distracted me from everything else that had ensued, and lent perspective to the day. No matter what happened in life, nothing could rob me of the rain. I felt a little better.
The following morning was bright and crisp. Val and I walked to a storage facility nearby to buy some boxes to put our things in. As soon as we were packed, we called another cab to take us to Columbus airport. He drove us on the highway past the inner city area, and I watched the high-rises of the crowded downtown slide by us. I wondered just how much about Columbus and its people we had learned from our two-day sojourn in a suburban corner on the outskirts. Was it the true face of the city? Was there a true face to any city?
At the airport, the first thing we did was check our boxes. We had to move items around between them to make sure they all stayed under the weight limits. Then we found an in-house restaurant for lunch. They put cheese in my salad, but I just picked it out. We sat in the “meditation room” for the remainder of our time before boarding, reading religious texts in relative quiet.
A few hours later, Val and I landed in Newark. Never before had the familiar grime of the metropolis seemed so welcoming to me. We loaded our luggage into another taxi and paid it to bring us to the apartment. It was dusk by the time we finally walked in the door. We had no money, no car, and no energy. We didn’t even bother to unpack the boxes. We headed straight for bed.
As we sank into the blankets, I asked Val, “What do you want to do tomorrow?”
She threw her arms around me, snuggling close. “Nothing!”
I agreed.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Obama and the Internet: Hope, Change, and Harsh Realities
Journey:
In early 2007, as Barack Obama’s campaign began to take shape, a California paralegal named Joe Anthony was inundated with responsibility. Several years before, Anthony had begun a MySpace fan page with the url of myspace.com/barackobama, and now it was taking on thousands of new friends.
Because of its popularity, the Obama team decided to work with Anthony to provide him with updates and to keep accurate information on the page. For several months, Anthony handled everything on his own for free. It began to cut into his work, his sleep, and his personal life. Finally, he asked to be paid for his service. The Obama team decided it had better just buy the page from him, and asked Anthony to set a price.
Anthony, who had no experience with this sort of thing, asked for about $39,000.00, an amount that is actually much lower (given the amount of friends – and clout – his page had acquired) than many Internet site owners and media consultants typically earn for similar deals. The Obama team, however, decided not to haggle. Instead, they had MySpace take the url away from Anthony on the grounds that it used Obama’s name. MySpace conceded, on the condition that Anthony got to keep his friends list. In the end, both parties wound up losing – but the Obama team no longer had to worry about someone on the outside having any control over the campaign’s image or message.
The Obama-Anthony debacle highlights the ultimate irony of Obama’s web-savvy campaign machine. By bypassing the middlemen and speaking “directly” to the American public, Obama was able to convince voters that he represented them best without worrying about the analytical scrutiny or filtering of the traditional media. As a result, traditional media professionals, who could only play catch-up in their reports and responses, were often relegated to gauging public response after the fact. This feedback loop allowed the Obama team to insulate its message while giving people the impression that they were shaping a political dialogue that was in fact shaping them.
The media were blocked from all but the most basic access to the campaign. Compared with McCain's "straight talk express," Obama might as well have been locked in a tower somewhere. In a July 24, 2008 article for The New Republic titled "End of the Affair," Gabriel Sherman wrote:
Reporters who cover Obama these days grouse that Obama's flacks shroud the campaign in secrecy and provide little to no access. "They're more disciplined than the Bush people," a reporter on the Obama trail gripes. "There was this idea of being transparent, but they're not. They're total tightwads with information."
Obama’s online campaign was the key to his grass-roots following and his unprecedented contribution base. His team’s organizational power was facilitated its focus on the youth culture, who primarily came to know him through the Internet. These novice voters and campaigners were eager to jump on board a campaign that they could participate in, and unquestioningly did whatever was asked of them. During the summer of 2008, college youths on break lined the streets of Manhattan, harassing passersby like lost Jehovah’s Witnesses. McCain (who, it must be remembered, only trailed by a few points in the popular vote), was barely a presence.
Obama’s online fundraising shattered all previous records. In September 2008, about $100 million of the $150 million he raised came from online contributions. It was the success of this method that gave him the edge in his final months, giving him the ability to buy all kinds of television advertising time and establish an extensive network of regional campaign offices.
But there were serious ethical problems with these funding practices that media outlets attempted to bring to the attention of the public, but which never gained traction. The most notable of these was Obama’s reversal on his promise to accept public funding after it became apparent that his online campaign would proffer him a significant advantage. When he did this, he offered essentially no apology or explanation. The media debated the moral ramifications for about a week, but dropped the subject when it failed to impact public perception. In October of 2008, the Washington Post reported that the Obama team was accepting donations through their website that were potentially untraceable (opening the possibility of illegal donations from people who’d exceeded the limit as well as other shady practices), the story did not even register among the public.
These and other scandals abounded – as did unanswered policy questions – but were only sporadically reported. Often, the story was too old by the time the media even got wind of what was going on. Other times, access was simply too restricted for a journalist to adequately vet an idea or suspicion. Even when stories did get out, the public just shrugged them off. Obama would come onto YouTube or change.org, say something vaguely inspiring, and his supporters would forget about what he’d done.
Now that Obama is living in a White House that is about as technologically advanced as a Commodore 64, he’s relying a little more on the media outlets he once forsook. And, as might be expected, they’ve come down on him a lot harder than they did during the campaign. The “honeymoon” period seems like it ended before he’d been there for a week. He’s promised to open his administration more, and to provide a way for outside voices to be heard in a more direct manner once it can be arranged. There’s no telling whether this will allow him to bypass traditional reporters once again.
But one thing is for sure – if he can avoid it, Obama certainly won’t let anyone else get hold of his message.
In early 2007, as Barack Obama’s campaign began to take shape, a California paralegal named Joe Anthony was inundated with responsibility. Several years before, Anthony had begun a MySpace fan page with the url of myspace.com/barackobama, and now it was taking on thousands of new friends.
Because of its popularity, the Obama team decided to work with Anthony to provide him with updates and to keep accurate information on the page. For several months, Anthony handled everything on his own for free. It began to cut into his work, his sleep, and his personal life. Finally, he asked to be paid for his service. The Obama team decided it had better just buy the page from him, and asked Anthony to set a price.
Anthony, who had no experience with this sort of thing, asked for about $39,000.00, an amount that is actually much lower (given the amount of friends – and clout – his page had acquired) than many Internet site owners and media consultants typically earn for similar deals. The Obama team, however, decided not to haggle. Instead, they had MySpace take the url away from Anthony on the grounds that it used Obama’s name. MySpace conceded, on the condition that Anthony got to keep his friends list. In the end, both parties wound up losing – but the Obama team no longer had to worry about someone on the outside having any control over the campaign’s image or message.
The Obama-Anthony debacle highlights the ultimate irony of Obama’s web-savvy campaign machine. By bypassing the middlemen and speaking “directly” to the American public, Obama was able to convince voters that he represented them best without worrying about the analytical scrutiny or filtering of the traditional media. As a result, traditional media professionals, who could only play catch-up in their reports and responses, were often relegated to gauging public response after the fact. This feedback loop allowed the Obama team to insulate its message while giving people the impression that they were shaping a political dialogue that was in fact shaping them.
The media were blocked from all but the most basic access to the campaign. Compared with McCain's "straight talk express," Obama might as well have been locked in a tower somewhere. In a July 24, 2008 article for The New Republic titled "End of the Affair," Gabriel Sherman wrote:
Reporters who cover Obama these days grouse that Obama's flacks shroud the campaign in secrecy and provide little to no access. "They're more disciplined than the Bush people," a reporter on the Obama trail gripes. "There was this idea of being transparent, but they're not. They're total tightwads with information."
Obama’s online campaign was the key to his grass-roots following and his unprecedented contribution base. His team’s organizational power was facilitated its focus on the youth culture, who primarily came to know him through the Internet. These novice voters and campaigners were eager to jump on board a campaign that they could participate in, and unquestioningly did whatever was asked of them. During the summer of 2008, college youths on break lined the streets of Manhattan, harassing passersby like lost Jehovah’s Witnesses. McCain (who, it must be remembered, only trailed by a few points in the popular vote), was barely a presence.
Obama’s online fundraising shattered all previous records. In September 2008, about $100 million of the $150 million he raised came from online contributions. It was the success of this method that gave him the edge in his final months, giving him the ability to buy all kinds of television advertising time and establish an extensive network of regional campaign offices.
But there were serious ethical problems with these funding practices that media outlets attempted to bring to the attention of the public, but which never gained traction. The most notable of these was Obama’s reversal on his promise to accept public funding after it became apparent that his online campaign would proffer him a significant advantage. When he did this, he offered essentially no apology or explanation. The media debated the moral ramifications for about a week, but dropped the subject when it failed to impact public perception. In October of 2008, the Washington Post reported that the Obama team was accepting donations through their website that were potentially untraceable (opening the possibility of illegal donations from people who’d exceeded the limit as well as other shady practices), the story did not even register among the public.
These and other scandals abounded – as did unanswered policy questions – but were only sporadically reported. Often, the story was too old by the time the media even got wind of what was going on. Other times, access was simply too restricted for a journalist to adequately vet an idea or suspicion. Even when stories did get out, the public just shrugged them off. Obama would come onto YouTube or change.org, say something vaguely inspiring, and his supporters would forget about what he’d done.
Now that Obama is living in a White House that is about as technologically advanced as a Commodore 64, he’s relying a little more on the media outlets he once forsook. And, as might be expected, they’ve come down on him a lot harder than they did during the campaign. The “honeymoon” period seems like it ended before he’d been there for a week. He’s promised to open his administration more, and to provide a way for outside voices to be heard in a more direct manner once it can be arranged. There’s no telling whether this will allow him to bypass traditional reporters once again.
But one thing is for sure – if he can avoid it, Obama certainly won’t let anyone else get hold of his message.
Monday, February 9, 2009
If You Can Read This, You're Pretty Damned Lucky.
Inquiry:
Do you want to hear a frightening statistic? 27% of today's high school graduates in America are "functionally illiterate," according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That means that at least 1 out of every 4 new young adults lacks the ability to grasp the meaning of what you are currently reading. And recall that we are only speaking of graduates. When one factors in the growing number of students who drop out, the implications become more dire.
Compare this with Western Europe. Norway has a 100% literacy rate. So does Luxembourg. And Denmark. Most of the nations of Europe have rates that hover at or only slightly below 100%. Canada's in the same league. So is Japan. In fact, compare the United States with almost any other developed nation, and the troubles with our system are obvious.
All of these uneducated masses are being unleashed in a sagging, struggling economy. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is growing, and this is partially due to the fact that these people lack the skills necessary for not just one specific job, but to adapt to changing conditions, to manage money, and so on. They also lack basic argumentative and negotiation skills - so that even though they have voices, they are powerless to use them properly.
In the end, this drags our entire infrastructure down. We throw money at welfare programs, educational measures, and all manner of other patch-ups at the overall expense of everybody, and the numbers continue to sag.
Don't get too comfortable when considering all of this. America may have an inordinate amount of power in the world right now, but mere might has never kept an empire afloat, and the kinds of phenomena we are currently witnessing have historically preceded the downfalls of most major powers. Stability is always more important than brute force, and with America's cracking institutions, it is not inconceivable that we could follow the Greeks, the Romans, or the Soviet Russians.
You and I have a stake in this. Even people who live in other nations have a stake in it. Cynicism and disenchantment with the system may be natural given the current climate of our nation, but that will not solve these still-fixable problems. It takes a village to raise a child, and it will take a global village to bring our nation and its youth into a functional maturity.So do something, and do it intelligently. It's your fate, too.
Do you want to hear a frightening statistic? 27% of today's high school graduates in America are "functionally illiterate," according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That means that at least 1 out of every 4 new young adults lacks the ability to grasp the meaning of what you are currently reading. And recall that we are only speaking of graduates. When one factors in the growing number of students who drop out, the implications become more dire.
Compare this with Western Europe. Norway has a 100% literacy rate. So does Luxembourg. And Denmark. Most of the nations of Europe have rates that hover at or only slightly below 100%. Canada's in the same league. So is Japan. In fact, compare the United States with almost any other developed nation, and the troubles with our system are obvious.
All of these uneducated masses are being unleashed in a sagging, struggling economy. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is growing, and this is partially due to the fact that these people lack the skills necessary for not just one specific job, but to adapt to changing conditions, to manage money, and so on. They also lack basic argumentative and negotiation skills - so that even though they have voices, they are powerless to use them properly.
In the end, this drags our entire infrastructure down. We throw money at welfare programs, educational measures, and all manner of other patch-ups at the overall expense of everybody, and the numbers continue to sag.
Don't get too comfortable when considering all of this. America may have an inordinate amount of power in the world right now, but mere might has never kept an empire afloat, and the kinds of phenomena we are currently witnessing have historically preceded the downfalls of most major powers. Stability is always more important than brute force, and with America's cracking institutions, it is not inconceivable that we could follow the Greeks, the Romans, or the Soviet Russians.
You and I have a stake in this. Even people who live in other nations have a stake in it. Cynicism and disenchantment with the system may be natural given the current climate of our nation, but that will not solve these still-fixable problems. It takes a village to raise a child, and it will take a global village to bring our nation and its youth into a functional maturity.So do something, and do it intelligently. It's your fate, too.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Coffee Misperception
Discovery:
In an effort to save money and reduce waste, I often brew coffee at home and bring it with me to work in a travel mug. Because the mug I own is steel, I also keep a regular mug at work in case I need to warm my coffee in the microwave (I’m a slow drinker).
A few days ago, I had a jolting experience: as I poured the coffee from the metal mug into the regular one, I noticed that there were several tiny white cylindrical objects attached to the inside of the travel mug. Maggots! I was disgusted. I poured the coffee down the drain and rinsed the buggers down after it. I still felt a little creeped, so I drank a whole bottle of water to “wash” my throat out.
When I got home, I threw out the coffee grounds, washed everything thoroughly, and bought coffee at Starbucks for a few days. During this time, I wondered how the creatures had managed to infest a hot beverage, and why I hadn’t noticed them until after preparing everything. There seemed to be a gap somewhere, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I finally built up the courage to attempt homemade coffee again last night. I inspected everything before I used it. No sign of maggot activity. When it was ready, I grabbed the jar of sugar from the shelf. As I scooped out a spoonful of sugar, I found the answer to my questions: nested in the dunes of sugar were tiny grains of rice. Some of them must have gotten into my coffee before. I hadn’t been drinking maggot coffee after all! A wonderful feeling of exoneration swept over me.
Now I’m blissfully sipping from my travel mug once again. But I haven’t overcome the trauma of my experience entirely. Every so often, I pour my coffee into my other mug and check for foreign objects.
I may never be the same carefree coffee drinker I once was. And it’s all because of something that wasn’t even there.
In an effort to save money and reduce waste, I often brew coffee at home and bring it with me to work in a travel mug. Because the mug I own is steel, I also keep a regular mug at work in case I need to warm my coffee in the microwave (I’m a slow drinker).
A few days ago, I had a jolting experience: as I poured the coffee from the metal mug into the regular one, I noticed that there were several tiny white cylindrical objects attached to the inside of the travel mug. Maggots! I was disgusted. I poured the coffee down the drain and rinsed the buggers down after it. I still felt a little creeped, so I drank a whole bottle of water to “wash” my throat out.
When I got home, I threw out the coffee grounds, washed everything thoroughly, and bought coffee at Starbucks for a few days. During this time, I wondered how the creatures had managed to infest a hot beverage, and why I hadn’t noticed them until after preparing everything. There seemed to be a gap somewhere, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I finally built up the courage to attempt homemade coffee again last night. I inspected everything before I used it. No sign of maggot activity. When it was ready, I grabbed the jar of sugar from the shelf. As I scooped out a spoonful of sugar, I found the answer to my questions: nested in the dunes of sugar were tiny grains of rice. Some of them must have gotten into my coffee before. I hadn’t been drinking maggot coffee after all! A wonderful feeling of exoneration swept over me.
Now I’m blissfully sipping from my travel mug once again. But I haven’t overcome the trauma of my experience entirely. Every so often, I pour my coffee into my other mug and check for foreign objects.
I may never be the same carefree coffee drinker I once was. And it’s all because of something that wasn’t even there.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Tips On Arguing - Tu Quoque
Inquiry:
“Tu quoque” means “you too.” This tactic relies on shifting the focus of an argument from its independent merits to the number of people who subscribe to it. There are two ways to misrepresent an argument with this method.
A recent commercial encouraged people to take nutritional supplements. It showed several virile individuals of differing ages and backgrounds, each asserting that they took supplements. The voice-over then sprang into action. “180 million Americans take a nutritional supplement.”
This “appeal to popularity” approach is an attempt to support a claim with the fact that many other people already do it. It relies on the listener to make two false assumptions:
1) That others share the same purposes and lifestyles. While it would certainly be noteworthy if many experts on a subject subscribed to a practice (like nutritionists in the supplement example), one should be wary of large numbers that do not specify the details behind them.
2) That popularity makes something right. Most Americans once practiced slavery, too.
The second type of tu quoque argument is one that essentially says “two wrongs make a right.” This is the type of thinking that has robbed the United States of much of its global credibility on humanitarian issues in the recent past. It is easy for other nations to blow off U.S. claims of human rights abuses in those countries because we’ve played party to torture and the dubious imprisonment of internationals. It doesn’t matter, with this type of thinking, that the claims may be justified.
Either way, one must look past who is doing something and find out why.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
It Don't Matter If Obama's Black or White
Journey:
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a discussion on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about Obama’s decision to identify himself as African-American even though he is, technically, multi-racial. Some callers felt it was an affront or that it alienated them, while others felt it was a sign of self-solidarity and the recognition of a rightful cultural inheritance.
At the time, I was unsure where I stood on the issue. Being of primarily European descent myself, I could relate to the brushed-off feeling that some described. On the other hand, though, I recognized that extremely few “blacks” (indeed, extremely few Americans of any color) are descended from only one ethnic group. Americans tend to use skin tone as the primary determinant of race, and Obama fits the bill as far as melanin goes. No matter what he thought of himself growing up, those outside of his closest circles would have treated him as black, and he had to struggle with that impression as regularly as any full-blooded African.
The realities of Americans’ sight-based categorizations led me to consider further some of the sociological phenomena that may have contributed to Obama’s decision to favor the “black” label over the “multiracial” one. Identity negotiation depends as much upon the expectations that others have of an individual as they do on that individual’s own initial self-verification. That is, people in social environments strive to conform to the roles that the others in that group give them. What determines a person’s role may initially come from the perceptions that the individual has about himself prior to the group experience, but far more important will be the interpretations of his actions by others.
Identity is not a static feature; it develops and changes throughout a person’s lifetime, starting from birth. Identity plasticity is advantageous, because it allows us to fill multiple functions in a wide range of situations. Consider the world of jobs – few people these days only have one. Imagine that you start out as a factory worker, but are then promoted to the position of supervisor at a different facility. The technical skills you have may be equally applicable to either job; what changes are your social roles. You’re now expected to delegate tasks, to hold meetings with other supervisors, to hold a different standard of responsibility. Your old bosses are now colleagues. Your old coworkers are now friends-outside-of-work. Even the CEO’s expectations of you are different – she asks you for your opinion, or takes you to lunch, or demands to know why your workers are under-performing.
Identity is subtle and shifting, but certain aspects of it tend to become solidified over time when expectations stay consistent. We feel we’re trustworthy if long-standing acquaintances trust us. We feel we’re talented if lots of people notice our work. The identities we create are, in many cases, the self-fulfilled prophecies of what others allow us to demonstrate and recognize.
Eventually, these persistent characterizations become internalized. They become the fundamental principles by which we define ourselves.
Race is no different. It’s a socially constructed category with no simple physiological basis. So you can call yourself multi-racial all you like, but if people see you as black, you will experience society as a black person.
After contemplating all of these factors (and more), I felt I had a greater empathy for Obama’s choice of racial identity. But this Tuesday, as I watched him speak before the largest audience the National Mall has ever hosted, another thought occurred to me: this whole debate about racial identity relies upon an outmoded set of standards. Trying to figure out the best way to define Obama’s race is like trying to download an MP3 onto a record player: you’d run yourself in circles just looking for the USB port.
Like old technology, our understandings of race, ethnicity, culture, and other potentially divisive categorizations do little to capture what happens in the real world. Cultures change with each generation. Ethnicities have blended together and borrowed from one another for thousands of years. Peoples from different parts of the world have always been intermingling, trading wares and genes. Race doesn’t mean anything definite at all. All of these pieces of our identities are fluid and ethereal.
Obama doesn’t speak much about his race, because he doesn’t need to. He’s seen enough to understand how convoluted the concept is, how patently absurd. At the same time, he incorporates racially charged imagery into his speeches, juxtaposing some of the traditional “white” American narratives with those of other backgrounds. This is no mistake: he’s setting the precedent for a unified human narrative, where we can all feel as if these histories belong to our personal heritage.
Meanwhile, Obama’s prominence and eloquence has thrust racial questions back into the open. For the past few months in media and in peoples’ personal experiences, the meanings and experiences of race (on every side) have become salient topics of conversation.
This is also as it should be. When we can begin to talk about race, we begin to see some of the absurdities and travesties that our old definitions engender. And by seeing these, we can further erode the barriers of prejudice, discrimination, and systemic ignorance that continue to separate groups of humans from appreciating one another for what they really are.
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a discussion on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about Obama’s decision to identify himself as African-American even though he is, technically, multi-racial. Some callers felt it was an affront or that it alienated them, while others felt it was a sign of self-solidarity and the recognition of a rightful cultural inheritance.
At the time, I was unsure where I stood on the issue. Being of primarily European descent myself, I could relate to the brushed-off feeling that some described. On the other hand, though, I recognized that extremely few “blacks” (indeed, extremely few Americans of any color) are descended from only one ethnic group. Americans tend to use skin tone as the primary determinant of race, and Obama fits the bill as far as melanin goes. No matter what he thought of himself growing up, those outside of his closest circles would have treated him as black, and he had to struggle with that impression as regularly as any full-blooded African.
The realities of Americans’ sight-based categorizations led me to consider further some of the sociological phenomena that may have contributed to Obama’s decision to favor the “black” label over the “multiracial” one. Identity negotiation depends as much upon the expectations that others have of an individual as they do on that individual’s own initial self-verification. That is, people in social environments strive to conform to the roles that the others in that group give them. What determines a person’s role may initially come from the perceptions that the individual has about himself prior to the group experience, but far more important will be the interpretations of his actions by others.
Identity is not a static feature; it develops and changes throughout a person’s lifetime, starting from birth. Identity plasticity is advantageous, because it allows us to fill multiple functions in a wide range of situations. Consider the world of jobs – few people these days only have one. Imagine that you start out as a factory worker, but are then promoted to the position of supervisor at a different facility. The technical skills you have may be equally applicable to either job; what changes are your social roles. You’re now expected to delegate tasks, to hold meetings with other supervisors, to hold a different standard of responsibility. Your old bosses are now colleagues. Your old coworkers are now friends-outside-of-work. Even the CEO’s expectations of you are different – she asks you for your opinion, or takes you to lunch, or demands to know why your workers are under-performing.
Identity is subtle and shifting, but certain aspects of it tend to become solidified over time when expectations stay consistent. We feel we’re trustworthy if long-standing acquaintances trust us. We feel we’re talented if lots of people notice our work. The identities we create are, in many cases, the self-fulfilled prophecies of what others allow us to demonstrate and recognize.
Eventually, these persistent characterizations become internalized. They become the fundamental principles by which we define ourselves.
Race is no different. It’s a socially constructed category with no simple physiological basis. So you can call yourself multi-racial all you like, but if people see you as black, you will experience society as a black person.
After contemplating all of these factors (and more), I felt I had a greater empathy for Obama’s choice of racial identity. But this Tuesday, as I watched him speak before the largest audience the National Mall has ever hosted, another thought occurred to me: this whole debate about racial identity relies upon an outmoded set of standards. Trying to figure out the best way to define Obama’s race is like trying to download an MP3 onto a record player: you’d run yourself in circles just looking for the USB port.
Like old technology, our understandings of race, ethnicity, culture, and other potentially divisive categorizations do little to capture what happens in the real world. Cultures change with each generation. Ethnicities have blended together and borrowed from one another for thousands of years. Peoples from different parts of the world have always been intermingling, trading wares and genes. Race doesn’t mean anything definite at all. All of these pieces of our identities are fluid and ethereal.
Obama doesn’t speak much about his race, because he doesn’t need to. He’s seen enough to understand how convoluted the concept is, how patently absurd. At the same time, he incorporates racially charged imagery into his speeches, juxtaposing some of the traditional “white” American narratives with those of other backgrounds. This is no mistake: he’s setting the precedent for a unified human narrative, where we can all feel as if these histories belong to our personal heritage.
Meanwhile, Obama’s prominence and eloquence has thrust racial questions back into the open. For the past few months in media and in peoples’ personal experiences, the meanings and experiences of race (on every side) have become salient topics of conversation.
This is also as it should be. When we can begin to talk about race, we begin to see some of the absurdities and travesties that our old definitions engender. And by seeing these, we can further erode the barriers of prejudice, discrimination, and systemic ignorance that continue to separate groups of humans from appreciating one another for what they really are.
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