Ideas
The BBC ran one of the most glaring and depressing
pieces I think I've ever seen earlier this week, about the most recent UNICEF
report findings - that roughly half the world's children --
one billion
kids -- are essentially denied a childhood
because of disease, hunger, and war. Here's the
web
version of the report. The NYT's Somini Sengupta
took it up in the Week in
Review. It's just amazing to me that people in
this country, (and others, too) can talk about promoting a culture of life, and
harass people outside of abortion clinics, and proclaim moral superiority in the
face of such glaring problems that are begging for help. Jimmy Carter's
presidency -- or at least the moral leadership guided by his faith to take on
these issues -- isn't lauded enough in this regard. Although he does have an
organization -- the Carter
Center, I just got a mailing from them -- which
seeks to correct such cruelty. I am also really interested in the work of
Heifer
International, which has been around since 1944
-- it's devoted to spreading sustainability through the gifts of cows, goats,
trees, etc. to people in the developing world where such gifts can mean a world
of difference.
In other, less
disheartening news -- The Times put out its 4th Annual Year in Ideas. Here are
some of the pieces I liked
best.
Neo-secessionism.
(The Coastopia they mention -- I got that email, it was brilliant. Will post it
below, as will I post the contents of this
piece)
Popular
Constitutionalism. I'm glad they mentioned this.
I read Laurence Tribe's criticism of Kramer a few weeks ago and it really
depressed me.
Professional
Amateurs. (I'd like to be a professional
amateur. That's what the whole blog thing is about, as well, surprised they
didn't cite it, although its pretty obvious at this point. And wasn't blog
word of the
year? So I guess it's gotten enough coverage.
But I like this bit:
"In a
way, pro-ams represent a return to our past: until the 20th century, much
science was conducted by amateur societies. But the rise of pro-ams also
reflects recent social changes. We're living longer, which gives us more time to
grow bored with our cubicle jobs and to hunger for a richer life. ''You find
people in their 40's and 50's going back to the things they always wanted to do
in their youth,'' Leadbeater says. ''So they're becoming musicians, gardeners,
astronomers. Normally, we regard leisure just as 'nonwork.' But these people
treat their leisure very seriously. They want to get things out of
it.''
Leadbeater says that
governments ought to find ways to encourage the higher amateurism. After all, he
claims that pro-ams live healthier, more satisfied lives -- to say nothing of
all the cool stuff they create. Professionals, too, should get used to sharing
the stage. Because if Leadbetter is right, the future belongs not to the pros,
but to the weekend
warriors."
The
Micropolis. (Something David Brooks talks about
a lot, and I think it's an important
idea for Dems to
note.)
Kill
Midlevel Terrorists. This theory is related to a
lot of the ideas of networks and
netwars (a la the fantastic 2001 Rand
Corporation publication by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt) and the evolution
of al-Qaeda into an -ism -- an ideology -- which, as David Glenn notes, has
become franchisable in recent years.
There are a bunch of other interesting
things -- especially technological innovations -- that the Times includes, so
browse around the
list. Or Read on for some lengthier excerpts
from some of these ideas.
And Frank Rich
is
brilliant,
as always.
I am posting the content of the Neo-Secession,
Micropolis, Mid-level Terrorists below because they are useful and good.
Neo-Secessionism
By JACK HITT
Enraged by the president's war and still
angry about the last election, the Massachusetts Legislature recently called for
a special meeting of New England states to consider secession from the country.
Recent, that is, if 1814 is recent. That year, at the Hartford Convention,
delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and
Vermont toyed with an idea the country would hear a good bit more of half a
century later: that secession was a right, embedded in the
Constitution.
These days, in the
wake of George W. Bush's re-election, talk of secession is once again whipping
through the New England states. Proposals are being floated for a ''Coastopia''
that unites the West Coast and East Coast blue states along with a few select
heartland states. One Internet pamphleteer argued: ''In the middle of the
country, we have taken Iowa and Illinois, mostly because we need the fine
produce of Iowa's soil, and the museums in Chicago are fabulous.'' A proposed
map showing the United States of Canada just above ''JesusLand'' has become an
instant Internet classic.
Paul
Lewis, professor of English at Boston College, has written several articles
exploring secession and the logical step beyond. Last year he noted that
''Gore's states are contiguous either to Canada or to other Gore states,''
except New Mexico. ''In the most peaceful and democratic way, without invoking
images of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, these states need to secede from
the Union, reform into provinces and join
Canada.''
When contacted, old
secession organizations in the Deep South were quick with advice. ''I've heard
about this,'' said Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, which
advocates the modern secession of old Dixie. ''I say to the Yankee states, 'Go,
and be in a hurry about it.''' Growing serious, Hill observed that there isn't
really a red-state-blue-state divide. If you examine the map closely, many
counties in blue states are red. By population, the real divide is rural versus
urban. ''I would encourage them to start secession groups in the cities,'' he
said. ''I've always liked the city-state idea. It worked quite well in the
Middle Ages.''
But if it didn't work
out, and there had to be a War of Southern Aggression to save the Union, Hill
saw some good even in that. ''We could go up there and get back some of the
stolen silverware they looted from our ancestors 140 years
ago.''
Micropolis,
The
By JON GERTNER
It's probably easiest to define a
micropolis by what it isn't -- namely, a metropolis, which typically comprises a
dense ''core'' city of more than 50,000 people surrounded by a large cluster of
suburbs and exurbs. Since 1950, the United States Census Bureau has divided the
country into broad swaths of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. According
to the census, you were either in a metro area or you weren't. Any middle ground
between big-city living and remote rural living went
unrecognized.
That's no longer the
case. This is the first full year the federal government has gathered data on
573 regions sprinkled around the country known as micropolitan areas: locales
with a core city of fewer than 50,000 (as small as 10,000). In the South, that
means Mount Airy, N.C., the model for Mayberry in ''The Andy Griffith Show''; in
the Midwest, Ashtabula, Ohio; in the West, Heber, Utah; and in the East,
Corning, N.Y. There's no typical micropolis -- Dodge City, Kan., and Bennington,
Vt., present extreme variations within the category. Still, micro cities are
generally more countrified than metro cities. Hub airports are usually very far
away; so is good sushi. In addition, the suburbs of micropolitan cities often
resemble the low-density exurbs at the fringe of many metro areas. Houses sit on
large lots. Big-box retailers serve as commercial
centers.
The point of the
micropolitan category is not so much to give government agencies extra data to
crunch. It's to track the growth -- as well as the character -- of a type of
influential urban area that already exists but is barely understood by
demographers. In this regard, the census is far behind the business community,
which has been tapping far-flung small-city America for at least two decades.
Wal-Mart and Applebee's, in fact, have built vast empires from the legions who
live there. So has the national Republican Party. Strictly speaking, the
re-election of George W. Bush may have been less attributable to the so-called
rural vote (which can still lie well outside micro or metro areas) than to the
micropolitan vote. According to Robert Lang at Virginia Tech, in the newly
defined micropolitan areas in the United States, Bush won 60.6 percent of the
vote to Kerry's 39.2 percent. And in Ohio, 27 of the 29 micropolitan areas voted
red -- a difference that by itself accounts for Bush's victory
margin.
Kill Midlevel
Terrorists
By DAVID GLENN
What if Al Qaeda is less an organization
than a franchisable idea? What if the future of terrorism doesn't involve
tightly coordinated global conspiracies but rather small and self-generated
social networks? These prospects have counterterrorism officials scrambling to
explore the burgeoning academic field of social network
analysis.
Typically, network
theorists examine civilians' social circles. (This year, three sociologists
mapped romantic relationships at a Midwestern high school. Their models revealed
that students almost never take up with the exes of their exes' current
partner.) Now, however, the Pentagon would like to dismantle terrorist cells
with the same methods.
The most
visible scholar plowing this terrain is Kathleen M. Carley of Carnegie Mellon
University, who is supported by the Defense Department's Insight program (aka
Interpreting Network Structures to obtain Intelligence on Groups of Hidden
Terrorists).
In one recent paper,
Carley and her colleagues analyzed the cell that carried out the bloody American
Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998. If the police had detected this group before
the attacks, whom should they have targeted first? Wadih al Hage was the member
with the highest level of ''degree centrality'' (direct social ties with other
cell members) and ''betweenness centrality'' (that is, centrality in the cell's
general diffusion of tasks and ideas). But Ahmed the German had the cell's
highest levels of ''cognitive load'' (that is, he juggled the greatest number of
tasks, resources and negotiations) and ''task exclusivity'' (the largest number
of tasks that no other member of the cell could perform). Carley's answer: the
removal of a midlevel operative like Ahmed would have done more to destabilize
the cell, even though a superficial glance at a graph of the cell network would
have pegged Wadih al Hage as the most important
figure.
Of course, field agents who
stumble onto a potential terrorist cell have a difficult enough time learning
the players' actual names, much less their levels of task exclusivity. It is not
clear that network analysis will ever prove useful at the front lines. Carley
offers one option for future research, however: she wonders whether flooding a
cell with wrong information can be even more disruptive than removing its key
members.
Also:
American
Coastopia. (related to
Neo-Secessionism.)
American
Coastopia!
11/2/04
Ladies
and gentlemen, you needn't fret anymore. We have decided that we can't live in
the United States anymore, because so many of you in the "heartland" are so full
of shit. We were all going to move to various other countries, but then we
thought - why should WE move?
We are
tired of rednecks in Oklahoma picking the leader who will determine if it is
safe for us to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. We are sick of homophobic
knuckle-draggers in Wyoming contributing to the national debate on our gay
marriages. So we have done the only thing we
could.
We
seceded.
May I present to you:
AMERICAN COASTOPIA.
That's right,
American Coastopia. The states of Washington, Oregon and California are joining
us on one coast, and we will provide all of New England. In the middle of the
country, we have taken Iowa and Illinois, mostly because we need the fine
produce of Iowa's soil, and the museums in Chicago are
fabulous.
What's with the other dots?
Oh yes, we're taking Chapel Hill and Durham, North Carolina too. I'm not going
to live in a country without the Tar Heels. (And Duke? You're being moved to
Greensboro, just like Wake Forest was. Sorry!
Assholes.)
The other dot is New
Orleans, which you don't deserve. American Coastopia needs a place to gamble,
and the locals want nothing to do with you. Sure, you can visit, but it isn't
part of your country anymore.
I can
sense your worry. Who will get all the banks? You can fing have most of them,
because we're taking downtown and midtown Manhattan back, turning the whole
thing into a giant artist colony replete with movie studios and progressive
think tanks. Wall Street and other financial institutions will be relocated to
Charlotte, which we believe will suit your needs better. Frankly, the good folks
in Manhattan are sick of being a terrorist target for your
benefit.
A word about our politics.
Abortions will be safe and legal in American Coastopia, and homosexual men and
women will be free to marry at their discretion. We will have our own currency,
and trade with any countries we want. Everyone will have health care. Everyone
will have an identity card. Homelessness and unemployment will be virtually
unknown. We believe in a meritocracy and a huge chasm between church and state.
100% of our cars will be hybrid by
2006.
Yes, we're taking all the
people that ever created everything
beautiful.
Yes, we're taking all the funny
people too. All the sculptors, architects, surgeons, philosophers, violinists
and fishermen. You should have treated them better when you had
them.
We have no pledge of
allegiance, but I can say this: I am no longer from your United States of
America. I belong to American Coastopia, the United States of My Friends, the
Nation of Two: my wife and I. We hold our noses as we fly over you. We are
sickened by the way you treat people that are different from you. The rest of
the world despises America, and we don't want to be lumped in with you
anymore.
Please, all of you who went
to bed last night sick with worry, come to us. In American Coastopia, the light
is always on, the hazelnut lattés are always hot, and we have a trundle bed
for each and every one of you.
I know, I
know, this isn't helpful, but I just can't help myself sometimes.
Posted: Monday - December 13, 2004 at 08:34 PM
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