We need to talk...

This is a break-up letter I found the other day. I've been thinking about it a lot, and had I been around for the writing, I would have signed my name at the bottom in approval. I lifted it from this page in its entirety.

"

The Generation M Manifesto

8:01 AM Wednesday July 8, 2009

Tags:Economy, Generational issues, Global business

Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.

You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today's markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.

You didn't care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.

You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.

You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.

You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff thatmatters.

You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We're not for sale: we're learning to once again do what is meaningful.

There's a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I'm going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation "M."

What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s.

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who's Gen M?Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.

Gen M isn't just kind of awesome — it's vitally necessary. If you think the "M"s sound idealistic, think again.

The great crisis isn't going away, changing, or "morphing." It's the same old crisis — and it's growing.

You've failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I've repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.

But they're your institutions, not ours. You made them — and they're broken. Here's what I mean:

"... For example, the auto industry has cut back production so far that inventories have begun to shrink — even in the face of historically weak demand for motor vehicles. As the economy stabilizes, just slowing the pace of this inventory shrinkage will boost gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the nation's total output of goods and services."

Clearing the backlog of SUVs built on 30-year-old technology is going to pump up GDP? So what? There couldn't be a clearer example of why GDP is a totally flawed concept, an obsolete institution. We don't need more land yachts clogging our roads: we need a 21st Century auto industry.

I was (kind of) kidding about seceding before. Here's what it looks like to me: every generation has a challenge, and this, I think, is ours: to foot the bill for yesterday's profligacy — and to create, instead, an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity.

Anyone — young or old — can answer it. Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when you were born. So the question is this: do you still belong to the 20th century - or the 21st?

Love,

Umair and the Edge Economy Community"

A letter to my mom

This is the email I wrote to my mother when she asked about the National Equality March this weekend.

Hi Mom!

I had a really great time. I am a little sick now which is no good. I have a yucky lung cough, but not a fever, so I don't know what to call it. I felt pretty bad during the march (not much food, it was hot, lots of marching), but I feel much better now (but not well yet). The trip was so exciting! One Saturday, I went through one of the smithsonian museums, and then joined a "flash" protest against Don't Ask Don't Tell. I don't know why they called it a flash protest, because "flash" usually refers to something that only takes a few minutes. This protest took a few hours, and was very long and tiring. Afterward, I went back to the hotel and relaxed. The actual National March for Equality was on Sunday. There were 150,000 to 250,000 people there marching! It was incredible. I marched past the whitehouse on the way to the capitol.

I have to think that being out and going to the white house and fighting for my rights as an American and as a human being makes a difference. If I don't believe that, then I might as well pack up and leave. Even though we haven't seen the change President Obama has promised, we are getting closer. On the night before the march, the President announced that he was with us, and that he is working on repealing don't ask don't tell. While I don't believe in war, I do believe in justice and equality for all, and that means fighting for the kind of country where anyone can do what they aspire to do, even if I disagree with them and even if it doesn't affect me. While I can always wish that more people would contact their legislators, I am the only person I hold myself accountable for, and I gave up my weekend to go to Washington D.C.

Love,

Boy

National March for Equality

Think about me. Think about the kinds of things I like and the things I am interested in. Now imagine a restaurant perfectly tailored to me and those things. That is where I am right now. The restaurant is called Busboys and Poets, and it is basically the most hippie restaurant I have been to. Check out their website here.

We have been in DC for about three hours and we have done plenty of walking, visited two Starbucks, and found the fairtrade/wage/everything restaurant.

The plan for the day is to eat, hit up the Smithsonian, and then try to go to one of the many National Equality March events that are happening before the actual march tomorrow. NEM events can be found here.

Enough reading. Look at some pictures!

MBLGTACC

Last night, I headed up to the third floor of the Union for the M-PAW meeting, and I left feeling charged. M-PAW is the central planning team for the 2012 MBLGTACC at U of M. We covered the things you expect to cover at the first meeting for a conference that we have never hosted, until Mitch suggested that we share our visions. He said that we should just say what we think about when we think of the conference. Mitch's vision was of himself standing with a clipboard, directing people. My vision was of 2000 people who physically come together, although they have been digitally connected since the end of the 2011 conference.

My vision for the conference is visibility and transparency. I see the CPT blogging about what they are doing to prepare the conference. I see vlogs, blogs, tweets, texts, promotion videos, and photo streams. I see web cams and live blogs, revolutionary workshops, and youtube celebrities. I see digital maps, iphone friendly websites, and intuitively found information. I see the

conference as an opportunity to use the cool technology that has been created.

So, yeah. I see a lot of things. In anticipation of Wisconsin's conference, I present to you, their website!

Statement

This is another of my favorites from This American Life. It also happens to come from the same episode as "Up Where the Air is Clear".

This one is a short from "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind Blind" by the Neofuturists.

Person 1: Statement. Statement. Statement. Question?

Person 2: Agreement.

P1: Reassured statement. Confident statement. Overconfident statement.

P2: Question?

P1: Elaborate defensive excuse.

P2: Half-hearted agreement

P1: Insecure statement. Distracted statement. Absurd statement.

P2: Clarification question?

P1: Panicked bullshit explanation! Quick meaninless comic non-sequiter

P2: [laughter]

P1: [laughter] haha, fake laughter, haha, fake laughter

P1: Accidental compliment of physical characteristics.

P2: Pleased response.

P1: Shocked continuation of meanililess comic non-sequiter.

P2: [laughter]

P1: haha, relief laughter, haha.

P2: Superficial compliment.

P1: Self-assured agreement as denial.

P1: Exagerated statement. Exagerated statement. Grossly exagerated statement.

P2: Clarification question?

P1: Extremely exagerated elusidation.

P2: Mental compliment with accidental double entendre.

P1: hohoho, confident laughter, haha.

P2: Embarassed laughter, haha.

P1: Confident suggestive proposition.

P2: Violent denial!

P1: Aghast repetition as question.

P2: Disgusted, violent denial!

P1: Defensive incriminating implication.

P2: Offended retort.

P1: Aggressive childish insult.

P2: Disbeleiving retorical question?

P1: Aggressive childish insult.

P2: Stunned silence.

P1: Aggressive childish insult!

P2: Defensive childish response!

P1: Aggressive childish insult!

P2: Defensive childish response!

P1: Aggressive childish insult!

P2: Defensive childish response!

P1: Attempted condescending conclusive statement!

P2: Brilliant scathing remark with iterary allusion and longterm devestating scatalogical implications.

P1: Pathetic self revelation.

Check them out at Neofuturists.org; And of course, check out This American Life here.

A favorite story

This is one of my favorite stories. I heard it this past December on This American Life's repeat episode of "20 Acts in 60 Minutes" from 2003. I love it so much, I transcribed it for your viewing pleasure. You can listen to the episode online for free; the story starts around 17:50.

Up Where the Air is Clear
by Jonathon Goldstein

Before he ever moved to Gotham city, before he grew into the overweight obsessive sad sack of his later years, The Penguin was a poet and a dandy, who lived in London. He wrote complex villignelles and threw lavish dinner parties at which he only became more charming the more he drank. He wore a monocle, a top hat, and carried an umbrella. One evening at one of his dinner parties, after hours spent sipping absinthe, The Penguin ran up to the roof of his building, opened up his large black umbrella, and leapt off into the air. As he coasted to the ground, he hollered out lines from Blake...stuff about grabbing life by the fat of its stomach, and giving it a twist. He was that crazy. He was that bursting with life.

From that night on, he made it his habit to jump off roofs ever higher, while clutching an umbrella. After a while, he got pretty good at it too. He saw that by kicking his legs and twisting his back a certain way, he could actually prolong his flight, coasting all over the place, sometimes only landing after several daring minutes aloft.

It came to pass that The Penguin started hearing more and more about a certain nanny named Mary Poppins. She too, he was told, had been floating around London hanging from an umbrella handle. Everywhere he went, The Penguin kept hearing about her. How it was simply insane that they had not met each other yet. So finally, a dinner party was arranged by someone who knew them both; and on the evening of the party, The Penguin walked into the drawing room, saw Mary Poppins on the divan, doffed his top hat, and bowed low as was his style in those days.

He'd planned a few things to say and do when first meeting Mary Poppins. He thought he might lift up his umbrella as though challenging her to a duel. He imagined she would smile, and take up her own frilly, perhaps pink, umbrella; and then, together they would dance about the room, leaping over furniture, parrying and thrusting, perhaps even winding things up breathing heavily nose to nose.

Instead what happened,was The Penguin became very shy and quiet. As he stood there staring at her, his top hat felt needlessly clumsy, his monocle too small for his face, and the squinting needed to keep it in place was giving him a slight headache. For the first time in his life, The Penguin felt ludicrous.

"I imagine you two must have an infinite amount of things to speak of," said their host as he sat them together at the dinner table. The Penguin nodded uncertainly.

After three or four minutes, it became clear that The Penguin and Mary Poppins had absolutely nothing to say to one another that did not deal exclusively with umbrella travel--getting stuck in trees, the shoulder aches, anxiety about tipping over in the wind. Everyone at the table just sat there, staring at them expectantly, which made the whole thing even more awkward.

Trying to move things along, Mary Poppins asked The Penguin if he liked to sing, to which The penguin responded, "only when I'm drunk." Then she asked if he enjoyed children to which he replied, "yes. In a sweet wine sauce."

The Penguin then asked Mary Poppins how she kept people from looking up her skirt when she flew. She smiled politely, then turned to the man on her left, and asked him how he was enjoying the lamb. The man on her left was wearing an elegant, aristocratic cape. Mary, a bit drunk on the sherry, noted that if he spread his cape out, he might be able to glide about like a bat. The man on her left chuckled, and suggested that after dinner they head up to the roof and give it a try. Which they did.

Stressed about love, school, or evil wizards? Grab a pint.

I just read the article Harry Potter and the Pint of Liquid Courage by Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times and, while I was quite amused at the title, I was unimpressed by the article itself. Actually, I think it is a decent article that isn't very biased...a good piece of journalism; however, I think one sided arguments are more fun, so here is my take on the issue:

Not having seen the most recent of the magical cash-crop movies, I am not in a position to confirm or deny the amounts of drinking that occur in the film. It is to my benefit that all of the people the Parker-Pope interviewed seemed to acknowledge that alcohol had a noticeable role in the movie.

It has long been known that advertising (which I am going to extend to the use of certain products in popular media) does not have a direct, immediate, and powerful effect. This idea, known among media officials and undergraduates who take a communications 101 class (me), is called the hypodermic needle model. I do think that popular media, especially when directed at teens, has a powerful effect on some, but not necessarily direct or immediate. For me, it is an emotional connection. Of course I know that HP isn't real. I also know that those teen's troublesome situations are quite different from mine, and that the solutions to those situations and stresses should also be different. But stress is stress, and it seems like a little booze worked well for them, so why not give it a try?

I don't want to say that this is how it is for everyone, or that it is that bad of a thing. The acceptability of drinking alcohol and the definitions of alcoholism are socially relative*. So, in a way, this movie is simply helping acquaint the young with acceptable social standards. In this light, I think the role of alcohol makes much more sense. In many European nations, England especially, alcohol is a strong part of the culture, and there is little taboo about drinking if you are younger than legal buying age.

This idea reinforces my belief that popular media has a responsibility to promote social norms. I wrote an article about it in 2007, and I would like to warn about a few things you before you read it: 1) It involves a strong dose of Battlestar Galactica. I am a nerd. 2) It is political and annoyingly leftist. Don't judge. 3) It is written in a silly format. Again, don't judge.

Assuming you have at least skimmed that article, I will continue. For all I know, everything I see in the media is the result of extensive debate, a lot of thought has gone into it to ensure brainwashing, and great care has been taken to make sure that the viewers know that the black character dies first, the gay man has a lisp, the lesbian woman wears flannel, biracial and transgendered people don't exist, anyone from a country in, near or around the Middle East is a terrorist; and immigrants are all terrible people who steal jobs only because they can. If this is the case, I would be pretty sad. More likely, these stereotypical representations are what the majority of media watchers expect to see, so they are used to bolster viewership. Mass media is catered to the masses. In the case of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 16 year olds grabbing a pint to wind down after their run-ins with evil wizards is a typical response in Europe, but is surely not something that any of the pure youth of the USA would do.

*What I mean by this is that the limits for drinking are social standards, until it is life threatening, and even then, I think that if that was the norm in a culture it would be socially acceptable. Our society is adverse to drinking "too much" and drinking if one is "too young".

Life Update: Summer is coming to a close

Living in Portland for the summer has given me a wonderful opportunity to relax, rejuvenate, and reflect; and with one week to go, I have a few thoughts.

One is that I have yet to find an area of study that reaches out and grabs me. But instead of waiting for it to appear, I should choose to pursue something I am mildly interested in, at least. While out running the other day, I realized that I have at least a mild interest in food science. I have really enjoyed human physiology, health, and the books I have read on food, food systems, the food industry, and global issues around food. Add to this the increasing importance that food science is going to have as the human race expands, as people realize that we have yet to solve world hunger, and as we potentially lose arable land to climate change. I am going to stick with the Bio major and Peace and Social Justice minor, while I start looking at my options for post graduation.

Another thought I have had is that I have done a pretty good job of developing diligence over the summer. I am glad to have the time to develop this much needed quality, the lack of which cost me in GPA last year. In order to start the semester right, I will be fasting for Ramadan. I made the decision when I received an email from my hall director asking who was fasting for Ramadan so we could be accommodated for during training. The thought of fasting had crossed my mind a few months back, but this time, it was serious. After some thought and a chat with one of my housemates--She has celebrated Ramadan for a few years, but does not identify as Muslim-- I replied to the message. I decided that fasting for Ramadan would be a good way to do several things including being an ally for the Muslim community, improving my self control, and carrying the things I have learned and developed this summer back to Ann Arbor. Apart from those personal reasons, I also agree with what Ramadan is about: recognition of, solidarity with, and aid to the less fortunate; purification, which I interpret as breaking bad habits and minimizing bad thoughts; and forgiveness. All in all, I see these good reasons to fast. To clarify, I am not spiritual or religious in the least. But I can respect the good things that are done in the name and spirit of religions, and I think I can learn some powerful personal lessons through this experience.

That is all of the big news I have for now. I'll be back in AA soon, and I can't wait to see everyone again.

We Are SO Over Space

I was reading The World is Flat today I took interest in a particular passage. According to Friedman, fewer and fewer Americans are entering the scientific workforce.

Dirty little secret number one is that the generation of scientists and engineers who were motivated to go into science by the threat of Sputnik in 1957 and the inspiration of JFK are reaching their retirement years and are not being replaced in the numbers that they must be if an advanced economy like that of the United States is to remain at the head of the pack.

I thought, perhaps it is not that America's production of communist fearing scientists is slowing, but that the global interests in science have changed and the American education system is lagging behind. ₁

The Space Race and the First Cold War were immediate incentives to steer young students toward the sciences. This generation of young scientists interested in space technology and nuclear physics had profound effects on the United States and its workforce. As Friedman points out, however, something has changed over the years. Let's first compare what students are being taught and why.

To start, we take a look at what public schools are required to teach by the federal government. Wait a minute. . . there aren't any national requirements. It turns out that the curricula of the US education system is largely determined by school boards in each state and district, so instead of looking at the curriculum of each district, let's think about what schools across the nation are preparing students for. I would think that the majority of public schools are trying to prepare students to continue education at a college or university, and most public colleges and universities require some kind of standardized test score to be considered. It follows that schools must prepare students for these standardized tests that are required if students are to continue their educations. Two widely used standardized exams are the SAT and ACT. The SAT assesses reading and mathematics, as well as the recent addition of writing². The ACT assesses English, Math, Reading, and Science (in order of the number of questions on the exam), as well as an optional section in writing³.

At this time, I would like to point out that having gone to a public school in a wealthy neighborhood, I am have a bias about the kinds of things taught in public schools across the nation. Without the will to research this aspect of education in our country, I merely point out the fact that I am covering issues in the US educational system that I have experienced and heard about at length.

About 50 years ago, the US education system was transformed by the 1958 National Defense Education Act. At east, that was the plan. The act "provided support" for the development of foreign language, mathematics, and science programs in primary and secondary education⁴. Presently, the necessity of a degree from a higher education institution encourages primary and secondary schools to teach certain information, mainly reading, math, science, and writing. Evidently, it is not the subject matter being taught in schools that has changed since the 1950s.

What has changed is the reason these subjects are being taught, and I think it is about time for another change.

---

1.Friedman, T. L. (2007). The World is Flat (3rd ed., p. 343). New York: Picador.
2.http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/about/SATI.html
3.http://www.act.org/news/aapfacts.html
4.http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html

My Sad Morning News Round-Up I

This post is not a round up of sad news, as you might expect. Rather, it is a summary of various articles that lead me to believe there is no hope for the future (similar to Slap Upside the Head's occasional Pile O' Slaps). The topic for this round-up is food and agriculture from Wired! (Note: While these articles date back a few months, they were all on the first page of Wired articles tagged with agriculture.

In a development with potentially profound implications for agriculture, just three genetic mutations could change the way most crop plants reproduce....In a study published Monday in Public Library of Science Biology, French biologists found that this form of reproduction is linked to a gene mutation that stops sex cell division after the first parent cell split. When they added this and two other meiosis-regulating mutations to A. thaliana, the plant produced genetically matched pollen and ova through mitosis rather than meiosis. [Brandon Keim. June 09, 2009. Link]

Once again, the farming and agribusiness community is interested in monocropping. Not only monocropping, but should this work, cloning. If this breakthrough makes it, we will be able to take our relationship with seed corporations to the next level! "Yes, Mansanto, we are ready to upgrade from seasonal subscriptions with terminator seeds to a lifetime membership! Dear people of the world: science is good and can help us understand food better, but it is becoming increasingly evident that human economy and food do not play well with each other. Agricultural science is drafting the essence of our survival into the irrational and uncontrollable world of business. Stop it. Please.

Public health experts worry that another potentially lethal pig-borne disease could establish itself among farmworkers in the United States. Unlike the new swine flu virus, Streptococcus suis doesn't pass from person to person. But it's also more virulent, killing about one in 10 people in whom infection progresses to full-blown disease. [Brandon Keim. May 06, 2009. Link.]

Thank you, Brandon, for reporting that science has discovered that more evidence against industrial farming. This is rather bittersweet, as I am not very fond of the large scale farms that make wonderful incubators for these kinds of viruses, but I have heard just about all I can stand when it comes to "swine flus" See this post for a rant. Moving on...

Nature is gone. It was gone before you were born, before your parents were born, before the pilgrims arrived, before the pyramids were built. You are living on a used planet...So what now? First of all, we've got to stop trying to save the planet. For better or for worse, nature has long been what we have made it, and what we will make it.And it’s time for a “postnatural” environmentalism. Postnaturalism is not about recycling your garbage, it is about making something good out of grandpa’s garbage and leaving the very best garbage for your grandchildren. Postnaturalism means loving and embracing our human nature, the nature we have created to feed ourselves, the nature we live in. What good is environmentalism if it makes you depressed about the future? [Op-ed by Erle Ellis. May 06, 2009 . Link.]

Oh, please! You are arguing that we should stop trying to prevent human interaction with the planet because our ancestors have already made irreconcilable changes. Hey, the planet is already trashed so let's party! Perhaps I am just an drugged up hippie when I think that humans are not the only ones around and that the least we can do is not mess things up, try to discover how everything works, and screw up the aesthetics of our super complex biosphere. Also, assuming the ice age is coming pretty soon, I would rather be planning how to survive than doing arts and crafts with my trash.

Farmers in America grow two things, mostly: animal feed and corn for ethanol.In fact, Michigan State University agriculture researcher Bryan Bals noted the feed requirements for animals are an order of magnitude larger than Americans’ food requirements. That insight has led an MSU team to propose getting more out of the same amount of American farmland by increasing the amount of animal feed that farmers can harvest from an acre, thereby creating more land for biofuel crops. [Alexis Madrigal. May 06, 2009. Link.]

I have more problems with these topics than I can fit in a short rant commentary. I am not one for University grudges, but I have to say something. Bryan Bals, I am not sure what your insight was, but I am frightened that it didn't somehow include the dangers and inefficiencies of monocropping (soil nutrient depletion and chemical reliance to name two), the realization that biofuels are not the answer(little pdf with info), or that feedcrops are bad news bears (Watch King Corn or read In Defense of Food).

Now I know Wired is not a terribly great news source, but I had previously thought it more reliable and accurate than the sensationalists. I am sure there are things they do well, but my bitterness doesn't care about those right now. Instead, I am going to turn my attention to SEED, a magazine I had formerly cast off as hyper-progressive and unreadable. The turning point came when I stumbled upon an article about using and IBM supercomputer to recreate an underdeveloped neocortical column. (I have just taken about 10 minutes to look for this news on Wired and it was nowhere to be found...) Essentially, they are programming neurons that interact with each other using digital electrochemical signals. (...Look, Wired...no, it isn't just that SEED has superior design and layout, including the fact that they use 2 fonts intelligently compared to the five on your homepage. No, that's not what I meant...) Assuming my fruitless 15 minute search reflects the low impact of this story, I wonder why this did not make bigger news. Is it because it is a small project with little immediate impact? Is it because it is hard to categorize involving an incredible combination of research technology, programming, neuroscience, and general biology? Wait a minute, isn't that the kind of thing the world is heading toward? It seems like everything I am reading recently is advocating small groups, big ideas, and synergistic knowledge. (...I am at a different place in my life and I think it would be best if we both moved on. Wired, we are breaking up.) Whatever the case, it is evident to me that the world is heading in a different direction, and I want to be aware of what is happening.

So it looks like this post evolved from "bad news and my discontents" to my break up with Wired. Isn't it funny how these things hit you when you least expect it?

Links
Seed [Home]
Slap Upside the Head [Home]
Wired [Home]
LOL [XKCD]

A little extra: While writing this, I noticed a few things. I really wish I could have written this with LaTeX and imported it. Also, Blogger randomly inserted needless code into my post. I am not sure what it means, but I will be wary in the future. SEED also has superior vertical line spacing than Wired.