prof_reed

Barack + Bollywood = Victory!

2008-05-14T14:49:40Z

If you haven't seen this, and you love bollywood, then you really should. Honestly, can you picture either John McCain or Hillary Clinton doing Bollywood? I think not! The election is over! Screw West Virginia, if you've got the Bollywood vote your on your way to White House!

China and ideas

2008-05-13T14:26:49Z

Nirvak Singh has a blog post about a paper he heard from Davesh Kapur in which he reflects on the real difference between China and India. Certainly there is no discounting the role of centralization that China's authoritarian governnment played in the economic moves China has made, and contrastingly, the much less streamlined approached democracy has entailed for India. Many economists praise the Chinese totalitarian government as "quick and versitile" while India's democratic institutions are "slow and lumbering." Still Singh puts these aside and approaches the issue ideologically sideways which presents food for thought

"My reading of the role of ideas (not necessarily completely in line with Kapur’s) is that China saw a much sharper shift in the conception of what forces drive material progress. China’s experience with central control of all facets of society and economy, the sharp discontinuities it had already undergone, and the ability of the Communist Party to reach down to the local level, meant that the country’s ideational shift was comprehensive and far-reaching. In India, on the other hand, economic reform has not been accompanied by a similar sea change in perceptions. Liberalisation has been seen by many in the bureaucracy or political leadership as a necessary evil, to be implemented grudgingly on an as-needed basis, rather than as a fundamentally new approach to organising the economy. It is important to realise that this is not a difference between elite and masses—it is large segments of the elite that have failed to change their attitudes, despite the failures of the old Indian model of supposedly state-led development. The result is a false equation of concern for distributive justice with a preservation of the ancien régime, or with restoration of some non-existent golden age of governance."

Here the issue of ideology is not simply about an economic system, it is about a new way of thinking, a change in core values and the political will to follow through. Here again we veer perilously close (as G.W. Bush did once) to praising dictatorship as "easier to get things done." But what is more important I think is that India's reticence represents a failure in the marketplace of ideas of the free marketeers to make their case to the entire populace. All boats must be lifted and a transition from one economic system to another requires not the sink or swim callousness of Milton (or Thomas) Friedman, but clear sense of how people are going to be taken care of.

In our own country, if we are going to prepare for the global revolution that looks to be knocking at our door we cannot expect that a causal "jobs will be created, jobs will be lost, that's life in the global economy" approach is going to be successful. We must strengthen our governmental safety net. It is only when people have the confidence that their economic and physical well being will not be put in jeopardy that they will be willing to take the risks necessary to be competitive in the global economy. Otherwise we will continue to lose out to China and India.

Earthquake in China

2008-05-12T18:14:25Z

If you have watched the news today you probably have seen a massive earthquake has struck China. Reading of a magnitude of 7.8 (truly frightening for someone who is from California and knows what the numbers mean). The death toll of 7600 is probably only a beginning. My colleague and friend Shawn is in China right now with a group of students. He has texted and reported that he and the students are alright. I'm thankful for that.

Also on China I will draw attention to to Jim Hoagland's Op Ed in the Washington Post on a new alliance between Japan and China. An interesting article in general, but I would draw attention to this statement,

"Japan's modest growth over the past five years has been fueled almost entirely by its exports to China. While markets elsewhere have reached saturation levels, China's appetite for Japanese finished goods and manufacturing parts is unabated. Choosing his words with care, Fukuda hinted that Japan's economic future may lie in Asia rather than in its traditional markets in Europe and the Americas."

Currently we see the results of competing with China over oil and food. A shift in Japanese trade towards China may mean we are soon competing with China over televisions, cars and computers.

The Argument on Global Warming is Over

2008-05-12T16:18:19Z

Observe this quote announcing the simple fact of anthropocentric Global Warming:

"Some of the most compelling evidence of global warming comes to us from NASA. No longer do we need to rely on guesswork and computer modeling, because satellite images reveal a dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets. And I've seen some of this evidence up close. A few years ago I traveled to the area of Svalbard, Norway, a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. I was shown the southernmost point where a glacier had reached twenty years earlier. From there, we had to venture northward up the fjord to see where that same glacier ends today – because all the rest has melted. On a trip to Alaska, I heard about a national park visitor's center that was built to offer a picture-perfect view of a large glacier. Problem is, the glacier is gone. A work of nature that took ages to form had melted away in a matter of decades.

To lead in this effort, however, our government must strike at the source of the problem – with reforms that only Congress can enact and the president can sign. We know that greenhouse gasses are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change. And we know that among all greenhouse gasses, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion. Yet for all the good work of entrepreneurs and inventors in finding cleaner and better technologies, the fundamental incentives of the market are still on the side of carbon-based energy. This has to change before we can make the decisive shift away from fossil fuels."

The name of this radical, business busting, eco-terrorist? John McCain. Today in Oregon. Some may still argue whether there is a "consensus" among scientist, but clearly there is among the candidates for president.

New Blog on Apocalypticism

2008-05-11T18:20:39Z

I'm interrupting my current series on globalization to note the beginning of a new blog on apocalypticism. This is an area in which I am currently doing research and I've started a new blog to isolate my notes on that issues and not burden this blog with more technical material on those issues. I invite you to read my blog if you wish, its called Explaing The End at explainingtheend.blogspot.com. Hope to see you over there.

How big is china?

2008-05-09T18:46:53Z

I post this image from James Fallows Blog who is currently living in China. This is the crowd that greeted the arrival of the Olympic torch. "Frackin' huge" I think is the way one might describe it.

Yes, those are people. But an economist might suggest they are also wallets. And this is just one town in essentially the boonies of China. As Fallows says, "Shenzhen, remember, is a city that is geographically and culturally about as far distant from Beijing as you can find in China, the far-southern outpost of pure manufacturing-based market-mindedness." Makes you think.

Food Price Crisis and Globalization

2008-05-05T03:14:02Z

As part of my community service requirements I was forced to watch FOX News the other day (just kidding, it was on at the Gym), and I saw the "pundits" take pot shots respectively at enviromentalists, global warming, and ethanol requirements. To FOX's credit, there was a woman who rejected these explanations and instead looked to a new global demand for food from India and China as a greater part of the problem. Business Week (not exactly Enviromentalist Weekly) has an article Is Ethanol Getting a Bad Rap where they essentially debunk the idea that ethanol is at fault for rising food prices. Certainly it is a minor factor, but only a minor one. Let me be clear here, I have been troubled by the environmental concerns that corn based ethanol studies have raised recently. I agree with Obama's statements that we need to move to cellulose ethanol rather than food based.

But that said we must look to globalization for a large part of the problem. As incomes increase in India and China their demand for better nutrition and more food will increase accordingly. Likewise I have heard anecdotal stories that indicate that the sheer size of the burgeoning Indian and Chinese middle classes (still small proportionally, but huge in real numbers) are wrecking havoc in boutique industries. Squid becomes a fad among Chinese bourgeoisie and suddenly the fisheries of the entire Indian Ocean and Japanese Sea are wiped out. The same is true for oil and other raw resources as we see escalating energy prices (which also leads to higher transport costs and therefore higher food costs) and now food itself. As India and China continue to claw their way to the top of the economic food chain (no pun intended) the U.S. needs to recognize both opportunity and danger. Clearly rising food prices are good for American farmers and the Business Week articles notes that the U.S. Government has saved billions in subsidies not disbursed because of rising farming profits. At the same time simple free market economics may actually mitigate against the U.S. in the long term as increasing global demand will increase prices not only to the benefit of farmers but to the detriment of American consumers.

There have been some arguments that say the rising cost of food will benefit local farmers and increase "buy local" movements. Indeed Robyn Meredith argues that such an approach could actually be far more effective than tariffs or price controls. On the other hand others have warned that the beneficiaries may be fast food chains which can more easily absorb the cost increases and thus poorer urbanites (for whom local farmers markets are not readily available) might see increased purchasing of "Happy Meals" as more competitive than buying from Safeway. This would then certainly have a negative health impact on the U.S. populace which is having greater incidents of obesity and diabetes at younger ages than ever before. The health care costs associated with this are another piece of the puzzle which should not be ignored.

I don't have a solution to any of this, my only point here is to begin some analysis of the situation and to seek answers. So far answers seem in short supply.

Some Initial Thoughts About Globalization

2008-05-04T04:31:11Z

I have, of late, taken an interest in the issue of Globalization. I know I'm way out of field, but I first had my interest peaked by a lecture at UNF by Fareed Zacharia. Many of you probably know Zacharia's writing in Newsweek and he's a frequent contributor on news shows like "This Week." Generally his thoughts are about foreign policy and for the most part rational and realist. But the lecture that I attended was not on foreign policy per se but rather about the phenomena of Globalization in general. His point was encapsulated in what he called "Zacharia's law" which was 2.5 billion times anything is a big number. And 2.5 billion is the combined population of China and India. Other statistics that he mentioned were the dramatic increase in Chinese average wages which have gone from $400 a year to $2000 a year, a five-fold increase. This is in a scant 10 year time frame. At the same time middle class incomes in the United States have at best remained stagnant or fallen in the past 20 years after being adjusted for inflation. Not to mention the large number of working-class manufacturing jobs that have moved to China.

Earlier this year I was struck by the data presented in the video "Shift Happens" I'll post it here again as a reference point. If you haven't seen it you should. Not all of this data is about globalization but certainly it sets the stage.

I have thus done some reading on this issue. Recently I finished Robyn Meredith's "The Elephant and the Dragon." This is a deeply flawed book written by a reporter for Forbes Magazine. It has an anachronistically cold war mentality and a sloppy use of figures and is replete with anecdotes instead of analysis (though I hear Thomas Friedman's work is even worse). This is when it just isn't schizophrenic and self-contradictory. But getting past its rah-rah free tradism, and is inability to really deal with historical and cultural issues that aren't just caricatures, it does make some important points.

Historically speaking the rise of the United States is the result of the withdrawal of China and India from the world scene. Self-focused for most of the twentieth century they interacted little with the world economy. The United States on the other hand with its massive manufacturing base and technical innovation led the world and became the dominant economic power. Little competition was had for global resources like oil and food and the U.S. built itself as though it was the only player in the game. Its per capita use of resources dwarfing anyone else.

But this all changed in the late 80's and early 90's. China opened its doors to foreign investment, and quickly became a magnet for companies looking to build things at rock bottom labor prices. Investing heavily in infrastructure like roads, bridges and ports, China has now become the factory to the world. India on the other hand, invested in technological infrastructure like cabling and wiring, so when I called my Cable company to indicate my payment was on the way, I talked to "Monica" in Bangalore. The white collar jobs of call centers, customer support and back office accounting and form processing are being shipped over seas to India and soon, Meredith predicts, any company that can get on board will get on board with either China or India.

This happens as those advocates of free trade are singing the praises of higher corporate profits and the lower wages of India and China. But what they are celebrating is actually short term phenoma. Because there is no limit on China and India. They will continue to grow as fast as they can and their expansion cannot be checked by the United States.

What this means is that we are in the midst of a global redistribution of wealth. While salaries are falling in real terms in the U.S. they are rising in India and China. Sure American companies are making a lot of money right now, but the cultural revolution closed the universities. We are only now seeing the first generation of college graduates. The next generation will not be happy with $2000 a year salaries but will expect a 5 fold increase as well. And soon Chinese universities will be graduating not just B.A's but MBA's who will be interested not in just doing the bidding of whatever U.S. company happens to roll in to town, but will start and build their own businesses taking advantage of that same huge labor force that the U.S. has found so attractive. But with a consumer base of 2.5 billion they will soon dwarf our paltry corporations. It seems well within the realm of possibility that by the middle period of this century, a larger proportion of Americans will be working for Chinese Companies than Chinese working for American companies.

I'll stop here for now, but this seems to me to be one of the most important phenomena that we will address in this century and it requires serious consideration.

I like to watch

2008-04-13T21:25:32Z

On a lighter note, as a fan of both the actress below and BSG I post the following video below. My understand that if you just watch it you will vote for her to become a regular on Mahalo Daily. Now I love Veronica Belmont as much as the next geek, but really Melody would be sooooo much better. Give it a watch.

Bittergate - Obama clarifies this -- in 2004

2008-04-13T21:18:48Z

The latest kerfluffle comes from Obama's "bitter" comments from a Californian fund raiser. Obama's problem here was that he was, he though talking to insiders and therefore spoke in a shorthand that doesn't translate well. He has since clarified his position and has made the argument that since people can't depend on the government they turn to more community approaches which make them feel better about their lives even if it doesn't solve the underlying structural problems. But of course this explanation was quickly dismissed as election year retreat. However Josh Marshall over at TPM has unearthed this video

Wherein Obama makes the same point three years ago. I think its clear that Obama made some poor word choices "cling" and "bitter" did not serve his purpose, but as someone who makes their living by speaking in front of groups I would hate to have my word choices micro-analyzed at every point. Nonetheless, I think given the above clip, no fair minded person should accuse him of elitism or not-getting it. Its very clear that Obama gets it in a way no politician has for a very long time.

Inside the Obama Campaign (Part 2)

2008-04-06T18:45:57Z

My niece and I represent two ends of the Barack Obama support spectrum. I am a liberal over-educated latte sipping white guy (though I ask them to hold the coffee in my latte) and my niece is a college age person. Thus how should two Obama supporters spend their Saturday, why registering voters of course. North Carolina's deadline for voter registration ends next week, so this was the big weekend for voter registration. The weather on Saturday was rainy so we, accompanied by another professor and his spouse, staked out the center area of the Boone mall and solicited voter registration. I was quite proud of the way my generally shy and introverted niece seemed to take to this, boldly marching up to people asking if they were registered. If they said they were visiting she'd ask if they'd be here when early voting started. Her tenacity and courage were impressive (though I'm afraid she might have gotten more than her share of the "dirty old men" demographic -- I kept her in sight the entire time).

I on the other hand quickly sized up the various demographic and used different strategies which each. With people who were clearly residents or older folk I just inquired whether they were registered and by and large they said yes. And if they said no, they were clear they were in a hurry or they would sidle up and register (though unfortunately these were mostly republicans). But college students on the other hand were a different matter. They are part of Obama's base if we can get them to vote. So the question to them was whether they were registered in Boone. If they said, yes registered but not in Boone I'd explain that the primary fell during finals (which it does) and that there would be a polling place on campus or transportation to the polling place from campus, and wouldn't that be so much easier than hassling with absentee ballots. And here is where I generally struck gold. It wasn't a huge number of registrants but probably all told we got 20 in the two and 1/2 hours we put into it. But its hard work requiring energy and a lot of rejection, though several people did come up to me and told me they were obama supporters which was nice.

By the end though, we were tired, with sore feet and backs and returned to headquarters to turn in our forms and then we headed out to dinner and a movie. But we were filled with the satisfaction that we had done our part for our candidate. Next week we volunteer at headquarters so I report back then.

Inside the Obama Campaign (Part 1)

2008-04-04T01:54:28Z

So tonight I attended the first organizing meeting for Barack Obama in my county. North Carolina has suddenly become an important state and I live in a college town so Barack clearly has an advantage. But I am in a position to help my candidate as I have a more flexible schedule than many others. Likewise my young ward has expressed some interest in working for Obama herself (ah, I remember my first campaign, is was the 80's and I was licking envelopes for Ed Davis for county Sheriff, those were the days...) Anyway I consider it my civic duty to enable her burgeoning political enthusiasm so we attended the grand opening of Barack's office. We were not alone. The place was packed, a meeting that I expected to have a trickle of people (particularly on a cold and rainy night) was held with an overflow crowd. The mayor of my fair town spoke (I'd never seen her before) and talked about her Damascus like conversion from Hillary to Barack, joining the North Carolina "Mayors for Obama" movement. Then people were invited to get involved in a number of ways. Precinct Captains, Voter Registration Volunteers, Office help, outreach to churches and schools. We decided to sign up to do voter registration at the Mall on Saturday for a few hours, and office work on Monday. My niece re-registered on the spot and thus her voting career began.

The strategy here in North Carolina is pretty much the same as other states. Run up the score in Obama's strongholds -- College town and cities with large African-American populations -- and then try to chip away and Hillary's base. Try to bring new people into the process by doing a massive voter registration drive. Step one is the voter registration drive. Voter registration ends at the end of next week so volunteers will be at tables and holding clipboards all over the town. A clear emphasis is being put on registering college students. Specific instructions were given on how to convince a college student to change their registration to their local address so they can vote. North Carolina also has early voting, so once that begins there will be renewed emphasis on getting the college students to the polls early since the primary day falls in the middle of finals.

It will be interesting to see how all this goes. The Obama campaign is clearly a campaign with a lot of energy. I was surprised by the size of the crowd and their age. I expected to be one of the oldest people at this meeting, yet that was not the case. While college students were clearly there, they did not predominate. The age range was wide with it skewing towards the late 30's and up demographic. A good sign for Barack. I'll continue posting my "inside view" as it goes on.

More Offensive Words From Obama's Preachers

2008-03-23T00:32:40Z

As if Jermiah Wrights words were not bad enough, careful investigation on my part has found even more offensive and unpatriotic language in another of Obama's Religious inspirations. How long will it take him to denouce and reject the demagogues?

There are several preachers who Obama has spoken well of who clearly are preaching the kind of hate speech that makes Jeremiah Wright look tame by comparison. Here is the first one, this guy clearly isas unpatriotic as they come.

"This is the nation that has not obeyed the LORD its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips. Cut off your hair and throw it away; take up a lament on the barren heights, for the LORD has rejected and abandoned this generation that is under his wrath."

And here is one in which that same preacher uses that old liberal blame the past people for our current problems. When will these people take responsibility!

"O LORD, we acknowledge our wickedness and the guilt of our fathers; we have indeed sinned against you. For the sake of your name do not despise us; do not dishonor your glorious throne. Remember your covenant with us and do not break it."

This radical rant veers toward communism and is, of course, part of the whole blame America first song that we've come to expect.

"all your treasures I will give away as plunder, together with your high places, because of sin throughout your country. Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know, for you have kindled my anger, and it will burn forever."

Take another example from a different preacher. Another with clear links to Obama. This liberal diatribe is just the kind of hateful denunciation we should expect. This makes "God damn America" look tame. Clearly Obama has to act quickly to distance himself from this preacher.

"Woe to those who make unjust laws to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives or fall among the slain. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised."

And here another welfare loving preacher, blaming the rich for the plight of the poor. Obama should clearly denounce such class warfare!

" Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat. The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have done. "Will not the land tremble for this, and all who live in it mourn? The whole land will rise like the Nile; it will be stirred up and then sink like the river of Egypt. In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your religious feasts into mourning and all your singing into weeping. I will make all of you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day."

Clearly these preachers are problems for Obama. I'm sure Glen Beck, Pat Buchanan and Shawn Hannity will join me in demanding that Obama repudiate such preachers completely. This kind of hate speech is not to be tolerated. Of course, these sound bites and more can be found in your Bible. The prophets listed her Jermiah, Isaiah and Amos to use just a few examples make Jermiah Wright look like an amateur. These are men who knew how to curse a nation! Unafraid of accusations of "class warfare" or "reverse racism" they thundered from their pulpits and condemned their nation. Maybe the problem is not just the African American church, maybe the problem ultimately lies with these guys.

Jeremiah 7:27-8, Jeremiah 14:20-21 Jeremiah 17:3-4, Isaiah 10:1-4, Amos 8:4-10

Race and the Church

2008-03-19T16:02:11Z

Not to be one more swooning voice for Obama's bold and sophisticated analysis of race in the United States, I thought I'd add my own personal story. Obama's speech on race range true for me largely because my experience has some connections. Let me explain.

I came of age at the height of the so-called Reagan Revolution. While it may surprise people to hear it now, I was a stalwart conservative in my teen years. I attended a Take Back America Rally at the Long Beach Convention center which featured Jessie Helms as the keynote speaker and I stood up and cheered at every denunciation of the liberal betrayal of the country. In my senior year in high school and as I entered college my perspective changed politically. Yet the evangelical church I attended did not. I remember sitting in the pew one Sunday hearing my pastor fulminate against the "pinkos and commies" that made up our government. Who called down God's judgment upon them. When confronted about his demagogic language, he merely added a racial slur stating it was his duty to "call a spade a spade."

You might ask did I leave? Did I stand up in the middle of the service and proclaim I would not hear my Bible used to attack the country that I loved? That I would not tolerate a racist in my midst? No, I did not. And why did I not? Because a church is not just about a pastor. My pastor, like Obama's pastor was nearing the end of his career. He would leave the pastorate a few years later and he was product of his time. The Macarthite fear and racial bigotry that lived in his soul were the result of a man now so brittle with age that he could not see past them.

Yet again a church is not its pastor. The reason I did not leave was I was a sunday school teacher, my family attended that church, I had been a member for many years, I was active in the college group. I had attended and led Bible studies and had grown up in that church. Those who understand Christian theology understand that the church is a body, it is a complex organism filled with a variety of parts, each functioning differently. It cannot be reduced to one person. Certainly as much as I disagreed with those comments of my pastor, I was a part of something much larger that I was committed to.

My pastor's sermons were always taped and certainly a resourceful person could go back and find those tapes and find those moments that still echo in my mind. But like Barack, if you were to take the messages where my pastor went off the deep end and stack them up, and then take the sermons where he preached sermons that were a heartfelt application of the gospel, where he fed and led his congregation in a way that they could be proud of, the one pile would be very small and the other very large. The larger pile being the filled with sincerity and wisdom, not pettiness and fear.

And so as Obama talked about his church experience, his unwillingness to denounce the pastor and the church even as he denounced the hateful words spoken, I was taken back to my own experience and I was struck by his insights and his analysis. There is certainly more to be said about the legacy and future of race in America, but certainly Obama's speech was an important start.

The Charisma of Obama

2008-03-14T19:36:41Z

There has been some talk about the "messianic" nature of the Obama campaign. My often dialogue partner markcronan has done a post on precisely this topic. However, what I think sociologists like myself can contribute to this discussion is a clear theoretical understanding of what is really going on and I'd like to that now.

I turn to the work of Max Weber, one of the fathers of modern sociology. Weber argues there are three types of change. Traditional change which operates within the current status quo, beaurucratic change which functions on effective power distribution through compartmentalization and charismatic change which offers radical change. It is charismatic change which is the area I want to focus on for these comments. Here I reference the work of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu implicitly. The thing about charisma is that it is focused on the prophet. But the prophet is not the end of the story. Chrisma is actually dependent on three important parts: The prophet, the message and the audience. All three of these things are important, but at some level the least important of these is the prophet. The prophet is the instantiation of the message, its primary carrier, and the bearer of the message. They may have personal appeal and be great speakers, but certainly they do not have to be and history shows us both kinds of people. Such personal appeal is neither necessary nor sufficient for charisma, but is often the case certainly. What's key however is the message and the audience. The message must have an audience and the audience must be receptive to the message. Social theorist Louis Althusser calls this process "appellation": The message calls to the individual and the individual recognizes themselves in the call of the message. Althusser argues this is the way all ideologies work. But it helps us recognize the mechanism by which the message calls to the audience. If a large enough audience recognizes themselves as called by the message, as named by message, hears a message that addresses and speaks to them then their act of recognition imbues the prophet with Charisma. It is that correllation of messenger with message which strikes and audience as their own that makes the charismatic prophet.

This is the sociological mechanism by which the charismatic prophet is formed. To make the point from the other side, look at Alan Keyes. Certainly Keyes is a firey speaker and perhaps the most able republican debator. As Tucker Carlson said in the 2000 republican primary season, when Keyes debates he always wins, even if no one (meaning the audience) agrees with him. And therein the point is made. Despite Keyes obvious personal magnetism and speaking prowess his message had no audience so he could not become a charismatic prophet (at least not yet).

This sociological analysis then instructs us on how a charismatic prophet is made. And this is the mechanism of every agent of charismatic change be it Ghandi, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr. and yes even Hitler. Regardless of which example you choose the sociological mechanism is the same, a correspondence of message and audience incarnated in a messenger brings about charismatic change, radical change.

Now, if the mechanism is the same what distinguishes a Ghandi from a Hitler? What differentiates a good prophet from a bad prophet? And here the only way to make those distinctions is based on message. Hitler had a message of nationalist anger and scapegoating which blamed the plight of the German people on Gays, Communists, Gypsys and most especially Jews. Hitler's message was of purity and the elimination of the "mongrel" races. Contrast that with the message of Martin Luther King Jr., his was a vision of freedom for everyone, a dream of world when people would "be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin." Both were charismatic prophets, both had a message that called and audience to whom an audience responded. Both were herald in their time. But the reason MLK is a hero in history and given his own national holiday and Hitler is reviled in history as a monster is not because one was a charismatic prophet and the other was not sociologically speaking. It was the difference in message. One was a message of Hope the other a message of Hate. One was a message of division the other a message of coming together.

With this background then let us turn to Barack Obama. Is Barack Obama a charismatic prophet? Certainly by the criteria we have laid out above most probably. Whether he turns out to actually be one will depend upon whether is able to make radical change, but undoubtedly he has a message and an audience that is responding to it. The remaining question is whether that audience is large enough to effect that change. But clearly the mechanism is in play. So is he a good prophet or a bad prophet? Here we must look at his message. A read of his The Audacity of Hope gives us an insight into his message. One hears the themes that are echoed through his campaign. It is a message of bringing people together. That we as a people are tired of a politics that divides us. That we have been engaged in a caveman politics, beating one another over the head with clubs and for all that, all we have is a national headache. Our problems languish unsolved and our current politicians have been most effective at fighting each other to a draw. But that that division heightened by the punditocracy, the ADD media, and the echo chamber of talk radio and the blogosphere is not really what our lives are about. We go to work, and hang out with people who view the world differently. We are a mix of different ideals and backgrounds, races and creeds and yet we are all Americans. We all believe in some basic ideals encapsulated in the preamble "we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That all sides have a point, that the varied interests need to be balanced and that government needs to be of the people, by the people and for the people. This is the basic message of Audacity of Hope and it is not a message of hatred, bigotry or division. If we must, as sociology teaches us, base our judgment on the message and not the mechanism then this is a message that I do not fear.

global cooling

2008-03-13T16:10:01Z

We hear it often enough, "how can we possibly believe scientists predicting global warming when in the seventies they were all predicting a comming ICE AGE!" Some scientists decided to test this claim with interesting results. You can read the authors discussion of their results here at real climate. Essentially what they conclude is that there in fact was NO scientific consensus for global cooling. In fact there were six times more articles predicting global warming at the supposed peak of the global cooling fad. Its a tough time for global warming skeptics. They've lost GWB and in an interview the first thing McCain said would distinguish his administration from Bush would be a focus on climate change. Heck, even the southern Baptists have abandoned climate skepticism. This study isn't going to help them.

Obama

2008-03-02T23:10:10Z

I know I haven't posted in an age. But I figure if there is any place to put this, it is here. I am supporting Obama (in case its not clear) and part of the reason are these videos. If you haven't seen them, you should. They speak to our better angels, the summon us to a dream of unity and change. "We are not as divided as our politics would suggest" Those are powerful words and as I watch these videos made from speeches that I saw that moved me starting in Iowa and New Hampshire I have grown in my unwillingness to give up hope. I think that is the appeal of Obama and Will.i.am puts together videos that bring tears to my eyes. Share them with me, if you would and perhaps we can hope together.

Let start with Yes We Can. The first video that spoke to me. As I listen to this in the background, I am reminded the promise that is not what Obama will do but who we can be together.

Here is the latest video called We Are The Ones. I particularly love the way it begins with the message "We are one" before it morphs into "We Are The Ones." Less a song than a collection of testimonials, and yet it is the combination of the voices together that makes the point so effectively. If you haven't seen it watch it now.

Finally this is another version of the Yes We Can song, and yet I found it moving despite being filmed by a parent in the audience and not particularly well miked. The reason I include it is because of who it is: a group of young people maybe college, maybe high school taking the message of Yes We Can, with nothing but their own voices. In some ways it speaks to the hope that if young people can internalize that message, memorize and act upon it the future is brighter than it has ever been before. If you haven't seen this one, let it speak to you and cheer with the crowd at the end.

And if gospel is more your taste I recommend this. I don't love it as much as the others, but I'd be remiss not to include it.

Romeny's speech

2007-12-10T22:55:22Z

Romney's fatwa against secularism has also been called "un-mormon." Jan Ships, a preeminent scholar of Mormonism disagrees. Ships is not a Mormon herself but is beloved by the Mormons for her sympathetic historical analysis (I like to call her "the Ships that passes for Mormon in the night"). Her op-ed What Made Romeny's Speech Mormon is worth a read. Romeny's rather narrow understanding of religion as any branch of Christianity has me troubled and I think his speech, designed to appease evangelicals, should create more questions for the rest of us.

Anniversary

2007-08-04T19:54:08Z

It our anniversary! No, not the more important one where my partner and I have braved this crazy mixed-up world for that past decade and a half. No I'm talking about the fact that it has been one year since I threw off the shackles of monster-soft and embraced freedom: I became a linux user. And after a year, I thought I'd do a "state of the relationship" post. When I was toying with the idea of going to linux I came up with a list of things that were important to me. looking back at that post there were six things that were important to me: 1) ntfs support, 2) ability to run word and endnote 3) ability to update my mp3 player 4) snapstream support or switch to MythTV 5) Ms Access support 6) eye candy. Its interesting as I look back at that list, which thing really were important to me and which were not. Which things were easy and which were hard.

1)NTFS support was easy, ntfs-3g came out right about the time I made the switch and pretty much every distro now supports read/write of NTFS drives. Though in the end I switched to XFS and LVM which allowed me to stitch together multiple partitions to appear as one drive (which is freakin huge). 2)Word and endnote have not been the priority I thought they'd be, but I have not done as much scholarly work since the switch so I may feel differently next year. But at this moment I do not know of a linux replacement for endnote, though both endnote and Word work fine in wine (though I use cross-over office instead). 3)MP3 player support is again easy. I pretty much plug in my player and my distros recognize it. 4)As far as snapstream support goes, I haven't tried to run this in wine and my experiments with MythTV were all disasters. In the end for my home entertainment I am sticking with windows. Snapstream's beyond TV has some issues, but at this moment it is better than the alternatives. Myth continues to draw me, but every how-to talks about how much time it takes to set up. In the meantime I am forced to be a freedom-hater on that machine. 5) MS access support is another thing that in the end was less important to me than I thought it would be. I suspect Access would run in Crossover Office, but I have never installed it. I guess this indicates I took less of my work home than I envisioned. 6) XGL continues to impress me. The combination of the rotating cube which you can drag windows between, and create transparency when needed is wonderful. I've looked a vista, and I think beryl is really much more usable (and faster).

In the past year I've used three distro's for long periods of time. I started with Suse (and still run that on my file server). I switched to Mepis after an kernel update killed Suse 10.1 and I couldn't get beryl to run on 10.2 (though 10.2 has some cool things, no doubt). Mepis worked great, but it was based on an older version of Ubuntu so about a month ago I switched to Kubuntu 7.04. Its clear that Ubuntu is the big dog these days and I have found I really like Kubuntu and particularly the community support that comes with a version of Ubuntu. Plus getting beryl to run was very easy.

So pluses and minuses. On the one hand linux conforms to my personal politics much better than windows. A community driven operating system, free and open. The vaunted security and lower system requirements likewise impresses me. Kubuntu runs like a demon on my new amd64 5200. Whereas on my friends similar system, Vista was less impressive. On the other hand, open source can also be a curse. I was using a program trying to encode a video. The encoding didn't work so I googled the problem. The authors of the program had acknowledged the problem and uploaded a new version of the program. However the new version also used a number of new versions of libraries I didn't have on my system which weren't in the repositories and ultimately I gave up trying to use it, after investing several hours trying to track down .debs for the new libraries. For those of you who understood 1 in four words of that previous sentence, suffice it to say it ended up being too bleeding edge.

And herein lies the biggest problem of the open source world: program distribution. Everyone knows this is a problem. Mark Shuttleworth (billionaire founder of ubuntu) himself has blogged about it. But so far, a good solution has not been found. But of course, as I often tell my partner when she says, "if you were content with less-than-freedom you wouldn't have these problems" I actually had problems as a windows user as well. They were just different. But this one is a biggy. Perhaps Click-N-Run (the Linspire project) will save us in the end.

Still I would not go back. I like the fact that linux distributions are constantly improving on each other, coming up with new technologies and working together to find answers. Podcasts like the "Linux Action Show" and "LUG Radio" address the problems in thoughtful and interesting ways.

One year into the relationship, I'm out of the honeymoon, but still happily married. That goes for the other anniversary too :)

The Lost Tomb of Jesus

2007-07-08T05:33:10Z

I recently watched the Discovery Channel's "Lost Tomb of Jesus" which I have talked a little bit about before. I have just read a review of the book by the same name which has now come out. Jonathan Reed, an archaeologist (and fellow Claremonter) has published a Review of the book(pdf) in which he lays out the real problems with the project. An interesting note, apparently since the documentary was shown, the authors have decided the reference to Jesus' son in the Biblical text is not from John ("son behold thy mother.") but the young man in white from Mark. The facile switch from one character to the other shows, I think, the casual approach they take to the text, grasping at anything that will support their thesis. At least, however, no one can say that the issues have not been seriously engaged.

In Praise of LifeHacker

2007-07-03T05:25:19Z

I love RSS feeds. They are easy ways of keeping track of different blogs. Since my efforts run more techie, I've subscribed to a number of tech-oriented blogs. But my favorite is Lifehacker. Lifehacker has the best little utilities to make your life easier. Theirs is not tech for tech sake, but rather things to help use technology to attend to the everyday grind. For instance, since my computer went down, e-mail has been a nightmare. I have two gmail accounts and a couple accounts with other services. Gmail's interface is great, but the other web interfaces suck. A little write up on lifehacker explained how to use gmail to manage all your email accounts. It works, and bada bing, my e-mail life just got better. Plus, Lifehacker is OS independent with articles on Windows, Mac, and Linux in equal number. I appreciate the even handedness. And more and more I see the time when my primary operating system will be web. On that subject there are a couple of interesting articles reviewing web OS's (Web OS Roundup and Web OS Roundup 2) Check them out for yourself.

I have found it!

2007-06-26T05:18:37Z

I love Google Docs. I just love it. The ability to create documents on line without having to worry about backups and having access to it anywhere is fabulous. However as an academic its less than perfect. The one thing I can't do is footnotes. Now footnotes aren't everything they used to be. I noticed that in the flagship journal of my discipline, there has been a shift away from footnotes for citations and to in-text parenthetical citations. Still footnotes remain, even there, as an important way of noting important information that is not always relevant to the argument. And I have been somewhat sad that Google docs does not support footnoting (at least not yet). And then I discovered something called Think Free. It, like Google, allows you to create on-line documents, but it DOES support footnotes in its "power edit" mode. Power edit mode requires JAVA, and if you use quick edit mode, it will kill your footnotes (however it also has a revision system that lets you go back to the previous edit which will restore things if you make such a mistake -phew!). The creation of footnotes is a little clunky. When you create a footnote it for some reason disables the keyboard. You have to do a particular mouse action (in xp click save, in linux click format, font, ok) and then keyboard function will be restored. I have e-mailed tech support about this so hopefully it will be fixed soon. But imperfect footnote support is better than no footnote support. Plus you can also create slideshows like in powerpoint. The slideshows are relatively simple, you can't import pictures, video or sound and I see no way to create transitions. Still for a basic slide presentation that you can access from ANYWHERE it is cool. I believe it is only a matter of time before we all move away from our local operating systems to web OS. After that the machines will harvest our heat for energy as skynet sets our computers against us (dum, dum, duuum).

The Naked Archeologist

2007-06-24T06:07:03Z

I've been watching the naked archeologist with mixed feelings. First of the host of the Naked Archeologist, Simcha Jacobovici, is apparently neither. His credentials are a Master's degree in international relations. But my basic problem with the show is that too often it begins with a point and then tries to prove it, with no real clear sense of method. Take for instance the show on John the Baptist. Jacobovici seems obsessed with the notion that John the Baptist was "the real story" in the first century, not Jesus. Meaning I suppose that he had more followers and influence. He then goes about constantly reiterating this point. The point may be valid as far as it goes but without a clear method he easily dismisses (or ignores) texts that don't conform to his already existing thesis and uncritically swallows those that do, with no real acknowledgment of the immense scholarly literature on the topic. The real issue here was why did Christians care so much about John the Baptist that on the one hand they had to include him, even going so far as to invent a kin relationship between him and Jesus, and on the other hand constantly tried to denigrate him. That is what the text shows, but Jacobovici rather frenetic approach lacks a method that would allow him to get at that issue. So instead we are left with "was John the Baptist really the messiah" question.

The Lost Tomb of Jesus likewise shows the same methodless approach to the data. In this show he accepts one genealogy but not the other. Why? Both have a clear theological bias. Why accept one? He uses the fourth century text of the Acts of Philip, to argue that Mary Magdalene died in Jerusalem. On what basis is this a valid historical source some centuries after the fact? He uses the scene in John where Jesus says to the beloved disciple, "Behold thy mother." This story is not corroborated by any other gospel, and John (as even the church fathers understood when they labeled it a "spiritual gospel") is the least historically reliable of the four gospels. How does it have special validity here? The problem here again is method. Jacobivici employs no clear historical method to sort through the data. His method essentially seems to be, if it agrees with his thesis he accepts it, otherwise he rejects it.

But don't get me wrong, my problem is not that he has challenged the text. By my estimation his basic problem is he is too UNcritical of the texts. This is particularly true when he looks at the Hebrew Bible. Here he seems to have a religious stake and his work switches from uncritical to advocacy. In the episode "Who Wrote the Bible", starting with his intuition that the Torah "all sounds like the same voice" he attacks the documentary hypothesis. Yet he dismisses the most compelling arguments which are the textual doublets (most of my undergraduates are amazed at the fact that the two creation stories are so different) and focuses on instead on two pieces of evidence: the paleolithic Hebrew inscription and the silver plates form Ketef Hinnon. As interesting as these discoveries are, they do not actually address whether multiple authors were involved in writing the Pentateuch. But since Jacobivici is committed to Mosaic authorship, he dismisses the doublets problem, never address the problem of the death of Moses being recorded in books allegedly written by Moses and focuses instead on these, less relevant archaeological finds. At best Ketef Hinnon changes some conceptions of the dating of R (the final redaction), assuming both sides of the amulet came from the same text, a hypothesis that has yet to be proven. But here, unlike the New Testament stuff, its clear Jacobovici has an investment and so his work is even more conservative and less critical, less scholarly and less methodologically sound.

Which is not to say I don't enjoy the Naked Archeologist. I haven't canceled my Tivo subscription to it. But I won't use it in class and folks who watch it should be aware that its entertainment, not scholarship. Whether I agree or disagree with his conclusions in a particular episode (and I sometimes do agree with him) it is how he gets there that is the crux of the problem and differentiates his work from real scholarship.

A more personal blog

2007-06-17T07:14:41Z

I've started a blog over at vox which will be a more personal reflection about my life particularly with the coming move. This blog will continue to be updated occasionally with thoughts about culture, technology, politics and religion. But if your interested something more personal you may want to check out my vox blog at http://randywreed.vox.com

Is Beauty a Superpower?

2007-06-15T14:43:04Z

Aishwayra Rai (now Bachchan) has been contracted to play 8 episodes of Heroes! (whole story here

"The career of the gorgeous Aishwarya Rai has not really hit a lull after her wedding to Abhishek Bachchan .

Close on the heels of her bagging prestigious films with Ram Gopal Varma and Karan Johar , the appreciation for her role in the UK film Provoked and the news that her true blue international project, The Last Legion will see the light of the day, comes the report that Ash has been signed up to star in the top US sci-fi serial ‘Heroes’."

Apparently Ash will play Suresh long-thought-dead sister with her own (as of yet) undisclosed superpower. Yay Ash! Yay Heroes!