A lovely cool evening.  I’ve bought some tasty take-out Chinese food from down the street, and have decided to just stay in for the rest of the evening.  Before resolving to do this, I’d been feeling exhausted, and sort of somehow pulled some muscle in my while standing up, heaving up my shoulder bag full of papers and (it must be admitted) trying to burp simulaneously.  It was probably a very obscure muscle involved in doing these three things, but it feels ok now, after a short walk, some (decaffinated) iced-tea and egg-drop soup.  But I’m staying in tonight, and relaxing: no more grading tonight, with apologies to the universe.

Instead, I’ll chill-out, straighten-up the apartment, put on some tunes, and give y’all an update on classmates.com.  The update being: if you sign up with this high-school contact service, be perpaired for acutal high school contact.  For example, this morning:

Do you find yourself craving donuts at 4:00 on a Saturday morning?

Can you still quote parts of scripts your friends last performed more than 10 years ago?

Would you like to reconnect with old friends from P[ . . .] High’s Speech Team?

A few of us had the wacky idea to try and arrange an all-years Speech Team reunion . . .

Lordy.  Sweet saints preserve us. 

Ok.  I had wanted to write a little on the fun I had teaching today, but I’m now more inclined to  properly enjoy the newly cool weather by crawling into bed.  Goodnight!

. . . against us.  (Luckily, our bunny militarization efforts remain tightly under wraps).

I just now realized that GW Bush was re-elected less than one year ago.  Can that possibly be true?  (I write this having just graded a paper by a student who described attending Bush’s second inaugration, in 2003.  Which, for a lovely moment, seemed about right.) 

One existential advantage of the Bush adminsitration: time, which had seemed to move faster and faster with age, is slowed again.  It feels again like the endless summer-break time I remember from when I was ten.  Only this time, evil.

[link via The Bellman]

I know very close to nothing about UI’s new president (his inaguural address has not, as far as I can tell, been put on UI’s web site).

But the News-Gazette provides some highlights from White’s speech, and his “big plans” for UI:

Some examples of big ideas for the UI, he said, are creating a virtual university as a fourth campus to fully participate in online education; becoming a leader for sustainable energy production and consumption in the state; and developing “successful intelligence” in young people to help them achieve their professional and personal goals, in addition to academics.
  White remembered the UI’s first student, then introduced one of its most recent. Jared . . . of Decatur was called to active duty with his Illinois National Guard unit in 2003 and sent to Iraq early in 2004. While there, he took two UIS courses online, studying between missions.

Am I the only one who’s failing to be inspired?

Wow.  The rain outside is what’s left of Hurricane Rita, which apparently was real.

Last Wednesday, I was fortunate to have lunch with Sarah in the Ball Room over at the Illini Union–which is a fine place for a quick if somewhat institutional lunch during the week.  Outside, on the quadrangle the Orange and Blue Observer was holding a “Conservative Coming Out Day” and raffling off some kind of firearm.  Though I’m not sure (I left early), I can only presume that the firearm was given to some frightened conservative about to emerge from “the closet,” so that this person could might fight off tenured radicals and brainwashed liberal students thronging and corrupting campus, at the expense of the real world.

The Orange and Blue Observer is generally a bad paper, of course, and ideologically very conservative, to put it nicely.  But I do have a soft spot for it.  Its current issue includes a spot-on article about how UI students are now unconstitutionally prohibited from running for student government together as a slate of candidates.  I’m glad (and surprised, frankly) that somebody was paying attention enough to notice this.

A second (little-known) thing is that I was once a contributor to the Observer myself.  As a conservative freshman (who’d never read The Observer), I was asked by a friend of mine if I wanted to write for the paper.  I said sure, and turned in a reflection on a speaker on African cultural identity in the U.S.  Since my article was, I think, entirely approving of this pretty uncontroversial talk given at the YMCA, my piece was never published.  And so, aside from this blog, there is now no traceable connection between me and this august publication. 

But the Observer rally isn’t the only thing that’s been causing me to lately reconsider my high school conservatism, which was always kind of schizophrenic.  A Catholic Eagle Scout and avid player of Dungeons and Dragons, my two living political heroes were Mikhail Gorbachev and Republican presidential candidate Jack Kemp.  And odd combination–but not as odd as one might think.  What attracted me to Kemp was his conviction that markets could be used intelligently–he was the always the most prominent advocate around of “enterprise zones,” for example, that would put the power of markets to use–bringing jobs to areas that needed them.  In exchange for tax breaks and other incentives, companies would be required to locate in areas that needed development, and (as I recall) to pay a living wage to their workers. 

Now, to me, it’s interesting and a bit surprising that the promoters of such projects have always been Republican.  After-all the “enterprise zone” idea is one that seeks to use markets without subscribing to the illusion that only markets “free” of social planning or control are approveable. 

So when I see Rush Limbaugh, for example, Writing of Katrina that, “We Can Make This a Category 5 Hurricane Destruction of the Left” by rebuilding in the aftermath with enterprise zones, I get a little confused and annoyed.  Because, actually, I think enterprise zones are a good idea.  The problem is that when he refers to EZ’s, he means the Republican version, which as the always insightful Naomi Klein observes, amounts to little more than a transfer of wealth to those who are already the primary owners of the American “ownership society.”

But would EZ’s need to be regressive?  If so, I don’t see why.  And since watching Klein’s “The Take”, I’ve been thinking now and again about post-capitalist economic models.  One that’s interesting is provided by David Schweickart’s writings on “Market Socialism” or “economic democracy.”  Schweicart writes:

If one looks at the works of the major apologists for capitalism, Milton Friedman, for example, or F. A. Hayek, one finds the focus of the apology always on the virtues of the market and on the vices of central planning. Rhetorically this is an effective strategy, for it is much easier to defend the market than to defend the other two defining institutions of capitalism. Proponents of capitalism know well that it is better to keep attention directed toward the market and away from wage labor or private ownership of the means of production. 

One might object that wage labor and private ownership of the means of production are both entailed by the operation of markets.  But, I’d say, not necessarily.  Kemp’s notion of enterprise zones assumes that markets can be used within a more democratic framework (and in the 80’s Gorbachev was pushing towards a similar configuration from the opposite direction). 

In the end, my suggestion is that there’s good reason for Democrats, progressives, and even socialists to present their own versions of “enterprise zones,” as an alternative to the rapacious ones dreamed up by Republicans.  Perhaps new terminology is needed, but I don’t think there’s a reason for the left to continue to simply ignore the idea of market intervention to address social problems.    Not ’til after the revolution comes, anyhow.

Every now and again, one needs to see Phil Donahue kick a little ass (.wmv).

You’ve read about and discussed NASA’s plan to use new post-shuttle launch vehicles to return to the moon.

But what, exactly, is the US planning to do on the moon?  What would a semi-permanent moonbase look like?  And why return at all?  NASA’s announced answers to these questions remain vague.  But last year eleven sets of responses to these questions were offered to NASA in the development proposals submitted to NASA by eleven Aerospace concerns, each of which suggested different designs, missions, and philosophies for NASA’s return to the moon.  Some common themes:

Military:
“Provide nationally assured access to orbital locations for the placement of observation systems” and “assured access to space for development of force projection systems and movements of logistics.” (pdf link, p. 5)

Commercial:
“Commercialize space products and services” (pdf link, p.6)

Public Relations:
Keeping the public inspired with “regularly placed program milestones.” (pdf link, p.7)

It’s interesting to compare the details of these proposals.  But taken together, they raise a broader question: does NASA’s fear that the public will lose interest in this commercializing, militarizing, moon venture reflect an awareness that that the vision has finally been lost?

[I also posted this as a thread over on Mefi]

How can I be ahead of them all?

I note this morning that excellent ex-Urbanites Janna and Sanjay have a new blog.  They seem to be doing well out West.  Their blog is just starting up, but has a nice clean look, and almost perfect xhtml.  (tdq, on the other hand…).

In other news, here are some beedogs.

And do *not* wake up, turn on some so-so music and start dancing around like a madman on Sunday morning.  You’ll just end having to watch the McLaughlin Group with an ice-pack on your hand, paper towels piling up in the garbage, and the remains of a broken light fixture on the floor.  Eventually, you’ll end up getting your stupid bloody knuckles stitched up at the local clinic.  Two days, they say, til I can hold a pencil (but we’ll see about that).

Not fun.

[Speaking of music, last night’s Split-Lip Rayfield show more than lived up to expectations.  And this morning, post-BRMC, I’ve been soaking up the sounds of Battleship Potemkin.  Which is . . . interesting.  The Pet Shop Boys go Soviet.  And (as would be hard to avoid when scoring Eisenstein’s film), they seem to go there in a pretty serious way.]

Well, it looks like the Sufjan Steven show over at the Canopy club is sold out.  Which is a bit of shame, since not so many popular recording artists take an interest in the state history of Illinois.  And while Illinoise does not contain songs relating to either Jonathan Baldwin Turner or Kennekuk, it does seem to conver some interesting ground.

Anyway so the plan-aheaders of the world triumph today, and occupy the seats of the rather nasty Canopy club.  With relentless promotion by the likes of Pitchfork, NPR, and UI’s Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Steven’s institutional backing is a little scary.  Who *are* these concert-goers with their sudden intererest in the arcana of Illinois history?  It all seems a little iffy.  In any case tomorrow’s payday, and I’ll probably grab a copy of his recent album, but I won’t despair too deeply for having missed tonight’s show which, while I’m sure it will be very cool and I have nothing against Mr. Stevens, does seem a little odd.

Champaign seems to be attracting good music lately.  There were plenty of tickets to be had at the door of the Highdive last Sunday, for the Knitters.  While my acquaintence with Exene has been largely through the lovely Exene 2.0, the earlier version put on a great show, that gradually persuaded me concerning the merits of punk/country hybridity.  The audience here was also annoying in ways I’ll avoid describing, except to mention the one guy who came over to ask me to move beacuse I was too tall, and and then after the show groused at me for not having moved enough for him (he who was *sitting down* in the very back of the Highdive and demanding an unobstructed view).

Quite a few good shows coming to c-u in the next few weeks, actually.

One other thing.  I was talking to some friends about RSS (”really simple syndication” feeds).  You’ll be sad to know that tdq doesn’t have one.  But these little streams of plain text are handy for keeping up with multiple sources of information.  I for one have been too lazy to use a news aggregator, but even a realtive illiterate like myself can manage with the new My Google.  Which allows you to build a clean ad-free homepage, with headlines from multiple news sources, arranged however you like.  My Google comes “loaded” with some standard items–the NY Times, Slashdot, etc.–but what’s great is that you can paste-in the web-addresses of RSS feeds you like, and so have your home page load-up for your inspection all the latest headlines from your favorite news sources, blogs, etc.  Notice also how you can drag content around the page with dream-like smoothness.

Perhaps I’m the last fellow on earth to play around with this, but it’s such a beautiful implementation that I had to mention it here. 

Finally, you might notice that I’ve stuck a rotating Flickr pic up at the head of my taskbar.  This is sort of neat, but not too customizable, and I not sure I’ll leave it up for long.  I do like the idea of including picture content here in some form, a la ambivalent imbrogilo.  Flickr is nice, since it’s their bandwith serving up those images, but I’m looking at other ideas, too.

Well, it was a nice several days of being gone.  TDQ’s little hiatus was the result of problems on Vizaweb’s side (the locus of the tdq soul is said to reside on one of their servers—somewhere in Minnesota, perhaps).  A quick google-search will reveal to you that VW has lately had more than a few problems, ever since their website was promoted by one or two prominent tech writers, such that that their super-cheap web services are now increasingly paid for by hordes of know-nothing computer neophytes like myself, who seem to require more support than can be sustained by VW’s low fee structure.

In any case, now that my domain name has finally been renewed, TDQ stands ready for its grand second year of operation.  My $35 dollar renewal fee to the ‘ole VW will buy you, the TDQ reader, hours of enlightenment and reading pleasure, I’m sure.  I do hope VW is just going through a rough spot and can get its act together again.  I had fine service from them in the past, but this time ’round there was no response from them for days, until they finally fixed the problem this afternoon.

In the meantime, I’d done a lot of research on cheap hosting (I was just about to switch hosts),  and I noticed a couple of interesting looking candidates.  BGFWeb seems like a solid and inexpensive choice, with their own servers and a friendly and helpful discussion forum (I knew VW was in trouble when its discussion forum mysteriously shut down).  I think another good choice would be tinyhosts.com, which looks ugly enough to scare off those who don’t know what they’re doing, but which seems a well-run operation.

Both sites have the “Fantastico” auto-script installer which means, I think,  that you can set-up a Wordpress blog with them at the touch of a button, which is pretty neat.  It is kind of nice having your own domain, since you can customize as you like, and since you tend to get rather high  search rankings.  I swear that for several days, TDQ was Google’s #1 result for a search of “Luther” and “Transubstantiation.” 

Anyway, I’ll be be back here now from time to time.  Tomorrow for sure.  Unless tdq and vizaweb disappear again, like Baba Yaga’s unruly little hut.

[p.s. So how is Vizaweb doing?  Is TDQ up for the promised 99.7% of the time? With siteuptime.com, you can see for yourself.]

As the waters rose around New Orleans, the poor residents of the city were instructed to take refuge in the Louisiana Superdome.  “The world’s largest unobstructed steel-constructed venue,” the Superdome would shelter the city’s residents under its massive and sophisticated lamella steel roof. 

But it didn’t work out.  As a citadel, the dome’s protections were insufficient.  And its failure has been emblematic.  While the adjoining New Orleans Convention Center also failed to protect its occupants, has been the Superdome, with its pretense of strength, and its place in a long architectural tradition that sees the form of the dome as an expression of the human potential for reason and cultural achievement, that has marked, in its failure, the failure of the United States.

The distance between the Enlightenment principles that such domes traditionally represent, and the actual patterns of human life in Louisiana is now brutally obvious—the Superdome’s small shell of rationality was grossly inadequate to the needs of the city.  It could no more contain the city’s human suffering, than levies of New Orleans, left unstrengthened due to tax cuts and ever-rising military expenditures, could withstand the rising waters of hurricane Katrina.

The metaphors offered by the failing social and architectural structures of New Orleans are drawn from engineering.  In this case, it’s impossible to miss that the failure here is not merely personal or moral, but structural.  And the solutions can only be structural as well, which might indicate that there’s a major intellectual shift afoot right now in the U.S.

It’s ironic that the Bush administration has lately been a proponent of “intelligent design”—since it’s long been an opponent of design in general.  In Bush’s first election for example, “social engineering” was derided by conservatives as a cynical assault on individual rights, whether through affirmative action, or anti-poverty programs, or efforts at sex education in schools.  Better, they said, to just tell kids to be honest good folk, and let the market sort out society’s business.

But, as I said, things may be changing.  At the university where I teach, it has been customary to regard engineers as among the more conservative students.  And indeed, I can attest that persuading engineering students to join the graduate employees union was sometimes difficult.  But underlying the patina of self-interested entitlement and intellectual elitism that marks some engineers, is a philosophy of design fundamentally opposed to thoughtless laissez-faire attitudes towards the governance of complex systems, and to the “nothing new under the sun” fatalism of Christian dominionist dogma.  This is something I came to understand when teaching classes in writing for engineers.  I taught in Everitt Hall, which is both the only building in which I was ever physically threatened when organizing on this campus, and a building named for William Everitt, who’s ideas with regard to Engineering and social change are still of interest and representative of an ideal to which progressives would do well to return.  Perhaps I read too much into the pamphlets I’ve seen tacked up around campus lately for EWB, but I think that there’s a connection being made now in the public eye between design and responsibility—a hopeful sign that needs to be encouraged.

There’s a change here, and a sense that the current administration is not merely personally corrupt (and personally corrupt in a catastrophic ways—noted politely or accurately), but that its resistance not merely to scientific knowledge, but to the principle of design itself is an abrogation of human responsibility that, continued, will only lead to even greater disaster.