Every Sunday Morning, a place where various things get thrown out, shot at, cut open, and dissected. Topics of interest: psychological, and medical anthropology, privatization, globalization, excess, language, humor, hip-hop culture, jazz, brain and mind, memory, urban space development, Los Angeles, the Chicago Bulls, UCLA Bruins, FC Barcelona, and mankind.
Spent most of undergrad criticizing the sciences in a minor that I thought would be devoted to just that.
But here I am, 2 years later, needing to learn it...
I bought the book In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel because:
a) I had been given a 2nd Barnes & Noble Giftcard thanks to my friend Nancy b) I figured I would probably take a class in auto repair...(or just rent a book from the 'brary) c) I wanted something that would encourage my interest in memory studies d) I didn't want something that I felt comfortable with and could read in an entire day
Yes, I've figured out something specific...I like the brain...and specifically I like memory.
Memory, because of its multifacetedness.
Short-term working memory has implications for intelligence, which is what I've always been interested in. Long-term memory shows what really lies deep within ourselves. Memory is a reflection of what we give meaning to, what we place importance on. Highly emotional, highly subjective states are what we remember most, because they are packed with meaning, and ultimately that's what we go on.
Overall, I didn't understand a lot of the biological language, but certainly, I became more interested in learning about them. I was interested in the insights he had into the science profession, the mind. Generally speaking, it's stuff you've heard before in the public discourse...our brains are plastic, you can learn a lot no matter what age you are, just in more detail.
On the book's interesting points:
1) Interesting stuff he said about the work of scientists.
First was a comment on scientific research work. He often described those he held in esteem as "creative", as if they were artists, rather than neurological or molecular biologists.
"There are scientists...who are very strong technically but who do not necessarily have the deepest insights into the biological questions they are studying (68)."
Then he mentioned the motviation of scientists; they are no different than any other human beings.
"If pure scientists were motivated by curiosity alone, they should be delighted when someone else sovles the problem they are working on---but that is not the usual reaction. Recognition by their peers and esteem come only to those who have made original contributions to the common stock of knowledge.(68)"
Scientists have a need to prove and validate themselves just like any other human being. However, the specialized, high-level language they use to describe their work, their findings, etc. makes it appear as if they are disconnected from the regular world.
2) On Learning: "Different forms of learning give rise to different forms of memory." (198) I have no clue as to what he's referring to here, but it could be interesting some day.
3) On Synapses and Learning: He mentions the strength of synaptic connections as being the key to learning.
Very important chapter in the book of neuro-bio for unbelievably moronic wankers.
"We found that learning leads to a change in the strength of synapctic connections---and therefore in the effectiveness of communication---between specific cells in the neural circuit that mediates the behavior.(200)
Strength---the long-term effectiveness of synaptic connections---is regulated by experience. This view implies that the potential for many of an organism's behaviors is built into the brain and is to that extent under genetic and developmental control; however, a creature's environment and learning alter the effectiveness of the preexisting pathways, thereby leading to the expression of new patterns of behavior.(202)"
He connects the idea that we have built-in knowledge to Immanuel Kant as opposed to John Locke's tabula rasa.
4) On Synapses: "Synaptic connections between two neurons can be...strengthened or weakened---by different forms of learning. Thus habituation weakens the synapse, whereas sensitization or classical condition strengthens it (204)."
So from this it sounds like habits make you have less synaptic connection because the synapse grows in itself, which means weaker connections between neurons, which means less likely to associate with another thing, which means that your habit becomes more engrained and exaggerated.
In contrast, being sensitized to something means stronger synapctic connections between neurons, which means more likely to associate with another thing, which means that your sensitization and association becomes more engrained and exaggerated.
In conclusion, associative and explicit learning arises from sensitization, while implicit learning arises from habituation.
5) On Neuro-bio: "Long-term memory required the synthesis of a new protein (212)." As opposed to the electrical charges that keep firing from neurons.
6) On Science and Evolution: Evolution does not have any higher purpose than its immediate adaptation for something.
"Evolution does not require new, specialized molecules to produce a new adaptive mechanism" (234).
...The Biochemical actions underlying memory did not arise apecifically to support memory. Rather neurons, simply recruited an efficient signaling system employed for other purposes in other cells and used it to produce the changes in synaptic strength required for memory storage.
7) On Evolution and Neuro-bio: The stuff that makes us what we are...our genes are ALSO subject themselves to the environment in which they live (264).
8) On Memories: A characteristic of age related memory loss is the inability to consolidate long-term memories (266).
9) On Synapses and Memory: The growth and maintenace of new synaptic terminals makes memory persist (276).
10) On Perception: Sensation is an abstraction not a replication, of the real world (Mountcastle via Kandel 302)
11) On the Hippocampus: Hippocampus is concerned with perception of the environment and represents a multisensory experience (308).
12) On Dopamine: Blocking dopamine blocks the stablization of the spatial map in an animal (313). Dopamine seems like the chemical for explicit learning and memory whereas serotonin represents the chemical for implicit learning.
13) On the Amygdala and Hippocampus: "Damage to the amygdala, which is concerned with the memory of fear, disrsupts the ability of an emotionally charged stimulus to elicit an emotional response. In contrast, damage to the hippocampus, which is concerned with conscious memory, interferes with the ability to remember the context in which the stimulus occurred. (342)"
14) Depression compromises the memory (361).
15) What science lacks are rules for explaining how subjective properties (consciousness) arise from the properties of objects (interconnecte nerve cells) (381).
Reflections:
1) On learning: As he was talking about studying analogs of learning, I was thinking about how people in general, learn. I think at the most ideal level, we learn by figuring out meanings. And then once we "learn" that it means something, we commit it to memory.
He mentioned habituation, sensitiation, and classical conditioning as the basis or most primordial form of learning.
2) On Habituation: Then I began thinking about habituation in my own world. The cycles of the world. I began thinking about the habits of people in the housing developments. What were their habits? What are the habits of the people in the middle and high classs? How did they develop them? What was the geography and environment that forced them to exhibit those habits that they did have?
3) On Sensitization: Then he mentioned sensitatization, and I began thinking about that in my own world. "After hearing a gun go off, a person will show an exaggerated response and will jump when he hears a tone or senses a touch on the shoulder (169)." Essentially, the gun going off acts as a sign and/or a symbol for someone to elicit a response.
4) On Brain studies of the past: I was curious about how this idea ever made sense in American Education in the 1950s:
"We were taught that the map of the somatosensory corex discovered by Wade Marshall is FIXED and IMMUTABLE throughout life." When and why did they think that it was fixed and mutable (216)? Was that informed by religion?
5) On Hippocampus and Spatiality: I also wondered about the hippocampus and spatial information that he mentioned(282).
6) On Intelligence: I was wondering how this fuses into Jeff Hawkins theory of brain and mind in his book On Intelligence.
7) On Fear: Fear is the easily most detectable emotion across species (339). It seems as though this is the emotion that what we give most the meaning to, and so we respond accordingly. It's really a disjointed event from anything were used to, so were likely to give a response out of the ordinary.
He brings in a dose of the breakthrough psychologit William James:
"We do not experience fear until after we have run away from the bear. We first act instinctively and then invoke cognition to explain the changes in the body associated with that action." (340)
Essentially, what he says is that emotion happens afterward, after an event. After the event is finished we build meaning off of that emotion via language expression which is then encoded into our memories.
8) On Learning: I began thinking of the social/asocial aspects of learning.
Learning is a very social activity, and that social activity is one way we build meanings. Learning in isolation is the most fruitful, but it's very difficult because we don't have the benefit of other people affirming your correctness in a belief or whatnot. You're forced to come up with your own meanings, definitions, labels for things and events which might be valid, but might not be recognized by anyone else.
Example: I watch a bunch of NBA basketball, but since I don't really have cable, it's often over the internet via international TV where they're speaking some other language other than English. So I don't watch a lot of basketball in English, which is good.
I don't have annoying commentators like Jeff Van Gundy telling me, indoctrinating me, on how unathletic, but intelligent the whiteboy Kirk Hinrich is, I just see what's on the basketball screen and make meaning out of what's happening all by myself. Therefore I learn what's happening in isolation, relatively speaking vs. other fans. I gain my knowledge of the game by my own observations, interpretations, and analysis. I "learn" what's happening basically on my own.
Realizing that I can learn either socially or asocially kind of annoyed me. Institutions seem to have a monopoly on social learning and will charge the hell out of you just for that. If you're not learning via an institution (and paying at least 20 dollars a unit), you feel like you don't know any avenue to learning what you need to learn.
The library is there, but it's limited and you still wouldn't know where to look.
But I digress.
9) On the feelings of disjointedness vs. fluidity: From Leo Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" (349).
From this quote, I became concerned with the idea of disjointedness in the unhappy family and explicitness vs. fluidity and implicitness in the happy family. Everything seems to be a disruption for the unhappy family whereas, everything seems to work in harmony for the happy family.
The discourse about the unhappy family, and explicitness triggered personal memories of the kids in the housing developments yet again. What types of disjointedness have they experienced and how have they dealt with them? I would think a quality of disjointedness towards long-term ventures, not because it's innate, but because it's been learned.
10) On Working Memory: "When normal individuals are challenge by a task that requires working memory, metabolic function in their prefrontal areas increases dramatically (354)."
Working memory seems to be a tool of social moderation --- they say "intelligence" is just working memory, and prefrontal areas with which it is associated with are associated with planning and judging.
Doubts and Questions:
1) On Kandel's Observations and Reductionist Methods: I wondered if Kandel just colored in stereotypical sexist interpretations in his interpretation of results for the differences between male and female brains.
"He [Some scientist named O'Keefe] has found clear differences in the way women and men attend to and orient themselves in the space around them. Women use nearby cues and landmarks. Thus when asked for directions, a woman is likely to say, "Turn right at the Walgreen's drugstore, and then drive until you see a white colonial houe on the left with green window shutters. Men rely more on an internalized geometric map. They are likely to say 'Drive five miles north, then turn right and head east for another half mile.' Brain imaging shows activation of different areas in mean and women as they think about space: the left hippocampus in men, and the right parietal and right prefrontal cortex in women. (315-316)"
That's pretty much a hegemonically sexist thing to say: women are the fluffy, artistic, right-side thinkers, while males are the logical, left-side thinkers.
I consider myself a male and masculine and all that other shit, but I definitely don't give directions like the cold hard-cut logical male. I currently don't have the means to argue against what he says, but I just know that what he says doesn't seem to represent the truth.
2) On Kandel's Memory and Perception of this growing epidemic of "disorders of memory"...disorders of memory are more evident today than they were when I began practicing medicine fifty years ago because people are living longer now (327)"
This brings up other questions related to medical anthropology and health care that cut across time and space.
Perhaps more people are just diagnosing more, prescribing more, just to make more money, which gives off the feeling that "disorders of memory are more evident today."
After all, the guy is in the pharmaceutical biz...
Also, people probably are living longer, but how is he sure that a connection can be made between the fact that there are more memory disorders and a longer life expectancy?
Anthropology has a history of leading the charge in chastizing "other" cultures for breeding "undesirable" attitudes.
When I say this, I have in mind Oscar Lewis' "Culture of Poverty" in which he uses the same judgmental terms as the "dominant" society uses to characterize low-income folks. He only defines these low-income folks based on what they do NOT have in comparison to the non-impoverished classes. He calls their living conditions "marginal", and makes the conclusion that they do not have a "cosmopolitan world view."
This paper probably touched off a chain reaction or chain web of events. It contributed to the Moynihan Report, a report by the liberal senator Moynihan whose report put a focus on the deterioration of the black-American family. This focus on the division and disintegration turn was something that Ronald Reagan seized upon in his campaign ads. Born was the stirring image of the welfare queen and its partner-in-crime, the self-help, pull-yourself-by-the-bootstraps discourse. I really wish someone would vandalize or burn that man's library in Simi Valley. LA Graffiti and gang violence...talk about your complete misplacement of energy and efforts. Crips, Bloods, Truchas, Mafia, Mobsters, 18th Street, Triggs, Wa-Chings, Maravillas there's a property on 40 Presidential Drive, Simi Valley, CA that needs some claiming.
But I digress.
The point is that once "poverty" became a "culture", as if it was a way of life people "chose", it became easy for regular people to say that those low-income people should simply "not choose" that way of life. As a result, anything associated with the black family just became lumped and interrelated with each other in popular discourse. Blacks in poverty? Easy, you can blame that on the fact that most of them are lazy and don't have a father figure.
People outside of academia have generally failed to look at root causes or look further into to why they've made the observations they've made. Unless they have been in the culture and/or they can understand or even make an attempt to understand, people did not and generally still do not take the extra step to look into what makes so many of them lazy and/or even better, what supplants laziness, what they are not lazy in, and/or why it appears they are lazy.
If anthropology can criticize "others", the field of anthropology can lead the charge in chastizing "this" culture for breeding "undesirable" attitudes.
My first course in Psychological anthropology asked the question of whether or not "culture" can make someone "sick." Even though I had been an anthropology major for 2 years to that point and not having been a fan of the perceived dominant tenets of American culture since a high school history class, I had never thought of this question.
And so now in an era of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds using steroids, Olympics stars like Marion Jones going to jail for using drugs, and the sport of cycling being dented every year because of some kind of drug scandal, what does this say about us and our most prominent cultures of excess and poverty?
However not to be completely mudslinging at these dominant cultures, and to differ a bit from their approach, maybe we should also ask, what are the root causes, and what gives people so much opportunity and space to consume what it does in excess?
Another question separate from focusing on the culture of excess but rather the culture surrounding "enhancement" is why there is such a moral code and imperative ascribed to sports as opposed to none whatsoever in the fields of academia or medicine? We don't care at all that a seizable chunk of them take brain enhancers. No one would call that "cheating." The Onion makes fun of that fact.
Trapped in a state of being ignored and meaningless. "Trapped" meaning you cannot go anywhere else but. We're individuals too, we have our own choices to make, our own individual skills, but why does it feel like we still aren't achieving anything?
Maybe because the meanings of our culture aren't acknowledged at large.
Speak up, Filipino. Why is it that you can only get along with people your own circles, but when you stand up to a white guy you back the fuck down? Why you gotta act the way that human beings with no third legs or very small ones act like?
Perhaps sometimes being acknowledged, even if it is considered bad, matters much more than doing the right thing. The opportunity to be acknowledged for doing bad is much easier.
Is what were living for really just all for the acquirement of better technological convenience for everyday tasks?
Does it matter that I can move about a second faster in an Impala than my Corolla? Point A to Point to B, why is there meaning attached to the fact that I can get there faster?
Is what I'm waiting for and anticipating really revolving around the fact that I would be able to access the same websites I always visit without thinking, and listen to the same music I always listen to all in the palm of my hand? What is that giving me other than just another distraction?
You would think it would be the other way around since presumably fat kids eat a lot more foods, likely "unhealthy ones" and become more susceptible to tooh erosion.
I wonder if this trend has to do with exercise levels.
In one of the dental self-sufficiency books I have, they say the teeth are merely a manifestation of a bodies' disease and not something that can be taken of in isolation.
I know that when I was a slightly overweight kid, in the mold of Bobby Hill during the junior high years, my mouth never felt cleaner. I ate whatever the fuck I want, drank lots of coke. I brushed a lot, flossed a lot, mouth never felt cleaner.
Fast forward about 10-11 years later to my height of marathon training, where I'm eating fish and rice but keeping it to a minimum, drinking water, and I'm getting all the symptoms of dry mouth: frequent thirst, dry, red tongue, dry feeling in the threat, and cracked lips. It's a coincidence that the LA Marathon organizers have been giving us all this dry mouth stuff.
Don't have quite the same brushing habits, but even if I did brush and floss twice a day, there was still a bad feeling in my mouth and my gums would still bleed.
Now that I've toned it down a bit, just a few weeks, post-marathon I don't suffer through any of those dry mouth symptoms anymore and my mouth feels healthier. I'm still brushing the same, but somehow all the brushing actually feels effective.
After reading about the Nacerima people, I do wonder of this practice of tooth brushing came from. I don't imagine no t-rex or great white shark taking out of their day to brush and floss, let alone 3 times a day.
Man's best homey doesn't brush and floss either. As it turns out, dogs have much cleaner mouths than humans. The same dogs who eat table scraps and anything off the ground. They say it has everything to do with their saliva. Saliva is its own self-regulating mechanism.
I've come to the conclusion that a good chunk of dental health seems to revolve a bit around saliva circulation. If you're not making much thanks to mouth breathing or excessive exercise, then your teeth are probably not in good shape.
With that said, I wonder if and if so, how saliva circulates better in fat kids than regular kids.
I am watching CBS now mainly because it was there when Stephen Curry held the ball for 8 seconds before passing it to some random Davidson white guy to brick a desperation 3.
CBS just finished talking about the Beijing Olympics and how their "state-run" media is firing back at "Western" media. Kind or ironic considering that CBS has an eye as its branded logo and a show called "Big Brother" is one of the linchpins to its success.
"State-run" has become a buzzword for communist. It's become the kind of adjective attached to the collective American patriotic amygdala for you to shake your head once again at a country like Venezuela or China.
But then in the report, there is room for CBS to have a bureau in that Communist state. What the hell is that? We've come to expect "state-run" meaning absolutely no-control, no-freedoms at all type of society.
What exactly does "state-run" even MEAN?
According to a wikipedia, the fact that things are state-run doesn't even have too much value anymore.
It's interesting that our media always labels countries like China or Venezuela with Communist and state-run. What's the mechanism behind that?
If they're brainwashed, then what exactly are we? How come we don't give our own outlets these adjectival labels as well? Like "conservative-controlled" FOX News or "excess-green-paper-driven" news outlets label of corporate/rich white person-run media?
by B.J. on 2/07/2008 09:10:00 AM
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I'm slightly annoyed by this sentiment that anti-rent control people, namely proponents of Proposition 98 in California, often throw around like Eli Manning in the Super Bowl.
That simple sentiment is "rent control doesn't work."
Sitting in afteroon LA traffic for about 2 hours on a 15-mile commute seeing lots of one-person cars including myself, I always think about this quote. I read it on some fool's facebook quotes, and I guess I kinda believe it.
As with any societal meme, I like to play with the idea in my head. I like to stretch the meme's limits and see where it rings true and doesn't ring true.
I have this idea to stretch that quote's limitations.
Inspired by a host of generation Y popular movies and memes in the Jetsons, Bladerunner, Rocketeer the sphere ball event in American Gladiators, Flubber, Steve Urkel's bubble car, this one random bank commercial with people traveling with some type of pogo stick springs as shoes, and bumper cars and agitated into action by LA traffic and pollution, I hearby announce that I have officially conceived the idea of...
the magnetically powered flying, jumping, running bubble-shaped cars.
Before something gets used widely, it has to be proven to be 1) safe and dependable, and most importantly, 2) cost-beneficial.
I am sure people have thought that we would've been traveling like the Jetsons or the Cyborgs in Bladerunner by now, but what many of them don't take into account is that assuming that type of technology ever becomes affordable, there would probably be a high number of in-air collisions and accidents.
With flying-only cars of the Jetsons all over the place even in its initial phases of inaffordability, there would still be too much variation in the ways people would be traveling. Wasn't it that way with the car in the early 20th century?
There wouldn't be any gravity to keep them on a singular planar surface. I'd imagine every part of airspace being used to capacity. Such hyper variation is a homemade recipe for trouble.
Safety in my apparatus relies heavily on a truly bubblish design.
Strong enough to keep you in and everything in place like the sphere balls in American gladiator, but a soft enough exterior so it doesn't harm anyone else. Nothing protruding or squared so you don't accidentally stab anyone.
My design would be made out of bumper car rubber with highly flexible yet durable material for the windows like a rubber- plastic-magnetic forcefield synthesis.
In regards to cost-beneficiality in general daily travel, people want the flexibility and speed to be anywhere at any time. This is why there's still a reluctance for people to invest in mass transit...there's no flexibility, you have to walk to a mass transit station, and any of its speed is negated by the fact that it's relatively inconvenient. At the same time however, people want to be able to haul a lot of their shit with them. They want to carry cases full of court briefings and bathroom reading material.
People want to be light and heavy at the same time.
Per my apparatus' cost-beneficiality, that's why the apparatus takes the shape of a classic compact bubble car...a synthesis of a car's storage space to keep your case briefings and bathroom reading magazines, with such flexibility and weightlessness yet durability in material that you could bring your apparatus in your cubicle.
Speed would also be adequately addressed. Being magnetically powered, the flying would be easy to accomplish, and it wouldn't even seem like flying because you're being magnetically attracted to a point. This would account for the speed, thus the reduced travel time, and thus the reason you buy this thing in the first place (with safety concerns being long since addressed).
However, if you feel like being active, you would also have the options of jumping and running, and then activating the magnets whenever you feel like it.
This wide range of activities automatically gives you not only more speed, but more options in your travel.
Think of it as a bunch of rounded gigantic martial arts helmets flying around with magnetic resistance and attraction power to take you to a destination in nanoseconds.
I wonder what new age religion would condemn it, though.
If there were one caveat in terms of cost, we'd probably have to install a city-wide magnetic repelling/attracting system to magnetically repel our apparati off the sidewalks and ground level roads.
The system would be in place to minimize pedestrian incidents.
However, widespread use would eventually pay for everything. The cost to society production would be beneficial. Not as much need for parking lots, car condominiums, and
So with the required 50% of the quote's requirements satisfied, now all someone has to do is achieve it.
P.S. Note to achiever: Let me patent the achievement phase, so that my monetary obligations will not only be healed but will also allow me to indulge in excessive phases of luxuria, gula, avarita, acedia, ira, invidia, and superbia.
by B.J. on 11/22/2007 07:31:00 AM
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"most trends in their earliest form are distinctly . . . they'll never make it outside . . . they need to be altered and have their edges smoothed. They need to be repackaged for the rest of us.
People sometimes act as if you go to the epicenter of cool, the idea comes straight and unchanged from that place and spreads everywhere. It never happens that way. The earliest of the early adopters takes that idea and uses it in a form that the rest of us would never use, because we're not interested in the extreme embodiment of some new idea. We're interested in something that fits much more into our lifestyle." --- Dee Dee Gordon, coolhunter
If I wear my old baggy cargo pants flanked with its share of tatters and worned-outness, someone usually tells me that I'm a slob. A dumb, fashionless, slob.
If I wore some store-bought ripped jeans, I'm at the apex of a trend and somehow I morph into "respectable." If I chose this brand of cotton, somehow women would suddenly want to hop into my equally trendy black steel-framed 12-year old bunk bed and engage in acts meant for kid-making in the apartment that I live in with my parents.
Basically, the ripped cotton I normally wear is somehow not as good as the new ripped cotton they sell you for 32 dollars. Double 'U', Tee, Eff (I won't be surprised if I see this on a trendy T-shirt soon).
I'm amazed at how people buy these mass-produced ripped jeans. Is there something fascinating about the pattern of its rips? Looks about as random as the rips on my real worn out pants. Seems like the mass production makes these rips more palatable for lots of people. Mass production almost makes it a social norm. It gives it a credibility acceptable for "middle-class" consumption. I would imagine that ripped jeans isn't something that some young hoity toity fashion designer who grew up in the OC and went to FIDM thought up.
No, this probably came from poor working people or their kids. Baggy pants, T-shirts, you can bet that it probably came from a working class thing, but of course it wasn't acceptable for people en masse to digest at first. Usually it's some rebellious artist type who picks up on these trends and then adapts them in diametric opposition to what they perceived their life was or against another tide which they feel is strong.
And it doesn't stop at clothes. The cool artists pick up their music (see Jazz, and Hip-hop), pick up their neighborhoods (see Gentrification), and even the way they speak. They pick up everything that the lower class does. Then somehow their usage of something in the lower-class appropriates its mass usage and consumption.
I don't think these artists mean for all these changes to happen, but their presence and influence in a trend then opens the gate to palatability for people en masse. People en masse who pick up on the trends but not necessarily the origins of a trend or what the lower class is about. Those inherent connections to the lower-class are lost in the mass production of things.
Nowadays I see Anti-Bush or Anti-war slogans taking the forms in bumper stickers, T-shirts least from the view here at 34 degrees Latitude and 118 degrees Longitude in the Lake of Silver. The "Make Love Not War" slogan printed is a great way to avoid getting too involved in politics and is available at $15.99 for 16 year old girls everywhere. This was a slogan dating back to Vietnam and now some corporations seized on it and are making a killing on such rhetoric.
But perhaps if we are going to keep consuming for these types of causes, there is some hope. You could look at is a start.
The efforts to green just about everything from the grass you walk on to the food you eat might be a start. I say 'might' because I don't have a grasp on all the greening issues and history has shown that everything that has looked like such a great idea in the past became a bad idea a generation later (see the automobile vs. the horse and the bike and the creation of sprawl).
If advocating against war can achieve a semblance of mass popularity, perhaps someday action towards progressive social justice in the form of the re-humanization of immigrants, reverse deforestation, the engaging education, the re-organization of homelessness can be the same way.
I can't think of any other way I'd like to re-focus our energies, our consumption patterns.
As India Arie says, kindness is timeless and giving someone your love is the freshest thing you can do.
If were going to be continuing consuming something en masse, why not respect for the fellow human?
Piense que ese y tenga un feliz el dia de gracias.
My beef with the blog is that while it is extremely informative, it plays onto people's fears because it gives incomplete information about whether victims and murderers know each other or not.
It's a blog full of victims. We read about is the victim's race, age, gender, where they were killed, and how they were killed. We read stats about how black and Latino males are the most adversely affected population. We might even read about how the job market correlates with homicide.
Unless commentors speak online, what we don't read about as often is a relationship a victim and a murderer might have had. We often don't read a story of a life; we read cold, dumb facts about cold, dumb murders. There are no positive stories of people doing anything to prevent anything in the neighborhood.
Not knowing these backstories, a fuller context, regardless of what's in the reporters' capabilities, make the murders seem like murders are randomly executed by people on people they don't even know. Apparently 77% of rape victims know who raped them, I wonder what that percentage is for murder victims. How much acquaintance murder is there compared to stranger murder?
Perhaps there could be better followups, more people assigned to cover stories, better police detail?
Not making these stories or these distinctions of acquaintance homicide paves the way for people from the outside and AWAY from those murders to disengage, stereotype, and label. It is probably this randomosity of the appearance of these murders, uncertainty that really scares people from the outside and causes them to make blanket comments about cutting off people's sources of livelihoods, like hip-hop concerts, parties, gatherings etc. The uncertainty imposed by a few whose own lives mirror that same uncertainty.
In a murder which has plenty of online responses, someone is almost ALWAYS bound to make a comment about personal responsibility like this one from a November 12th murder "Instead of people blaming the police, why was a 14 year old at this kind of party? This is a hallmark of the black community, blame the police for not doing enough, then when they do attempt to help, hold them at fault. Where is the personal responsibility for the parents, family, or friends of this kid?"
While there is reverance and a general sense of respect in the blogs, the dumbassery in some of the comments escalates, especially over the death of young teenagers. This comment was made over a 14-year old who got stabbed to death while the police and response team apparently did nothing to help him. Some commentors used the example of yet another black/brown teen as a springboard to offer all we needed to know to prevent murders: avoid hip-hop functions and listen to their anecdotes on parenting as if this would bring back the kid or that it would teach people a lesson.
In other words, people from the outside can make these big broad generalizations and recommendations because everything in the neighborhood is dangerous. The proof is in their google map of murders.
Left with just the facts of the place of murder, the time of murder, without questions as to why they were murdered (a concrete answer-seeking why) you can only make the same deductions and come up with the same answers.
To get a better grasp of these murders the questions should center around: how often is it completely random? How often is it acquaintence murder? How often is it on stupid young dumb male fighting over stupid shit like the way that x and x looked at x kind of violence? How often is the murder enacted in a whim? How often are these murders premeditated? How often the murderer is employed, has a family, etc...basically if they had much to lose? What was a victim gaining by being a certain place in time?
Add me to your reading list.
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