cuzproduces blogs

Deworming development

cuz — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 08:51:12 +0000

Here is an interesting screed by Michael Hobbes that argues that development is a slow, piecemeal process that is unamenable to development's Big Ideas (like Millenium Villages, PlayPump, and deworming) because local contexts are so varied and complex that Big Ideas are likely to produce unanticipated and undesired outcomes. It seems pretty right on to me.

So it begins...

cuz — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 20:41:29 +0000

This evening my daughter asked me if I knew that "God made everything". Apparently a middle-aged man (presumably a pastor or priest) came to her (private) school today and talked to them about how God made everything. "Apples? Did mankind make apples? No," she quoted to me, "Spoons? Did mankind make spoons? No." Well, actually, yes mankind did make spoons. But I guess this is where our intellectual relationship gets interesting. There's no way I'm going to let her believe that I believe in God. But how do you counter this kind of claim in a discussion with a five-year-old? I figured the Big Bang and evolution should wait and focused on the spoon. First, I tried to show that people make things, using a wonderful picture she drew in art class today as an example of something "God didn't make". She countered that God made the paper and pens she used to draw the picture. (Smart kid.) So I showed her a video of how paper is made. I'm not sure this was convincing since she got distracted by the mere opportunity to watch videos, but it drew our first ontological dispute to a temporary resolution.

I guess we should make some of our own paper.

Shit t-shirts say

cuz — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 04:08:05 +0000

I don't suppose this is really appropriate here, but over the last two days I've seen some curious t-shirts on women I passed during my commute to Korea University. The first was a young woman with her boyfriend whose shirt read, "I'm not gonna lie; I wanna get high", and was covered in marijuana leaves. The second was a little older and perhaps on her own way to work. Her shirt read, "Boys ain't nothing but hoes and tricks." I know there are lots of similar examples floating around on the Internetz, but these made me wonder. Do the wearers know what they say? Perhaps they do and wearing them (in pretend ignorance?) is their little way of being edgy.

Pop star ninja?

cuz — Sun, 11 May 2014 03:50:15 +0000

We were playing with newspaper the other day.

Censored

cuz — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 07:59:59 +0000

I read an article in the International NYTimes today that reported on American individuals' pride at being on Putin's sanctions list. "A badge of honor," one senator said. Well, it seems that I have my own badge of honor. My niece told me that she cannot access this website at her public school in Connecticut. Apparently it is listed as a "governmental advocacy" site and is thus inappropriate for high school students who should only be taught "facts" and not opinions. The details are vague and she is looking into the matter more deeply, but while this worries me, it is also a bit flattering. It worries me, of course, because even the official sanctioning of facts and opinions is ideological and politically motivated and channels students into narrow debates that do not question the broader organization of society, reducing their capacity as citizens. But it is also flattering that some individual, organization, or algorithm considers these words to be a potential threat (to...?).

My niece reports that she knows of no other blogs or sites that are blocked, just this. Of course, this means only that she hasn't come across others, but it also implies that there is likely an active limiting of free speech in the supposed land of freedom. Security through the suppression of ideas. Now where has that happened before...?

[Or perhaps it's just an expression of over-filtering.]