The Peristaltic Testator

…Comes this, the most comprehensive and interesting web page news story I've ever read.

If that isn't an endorsement, nothing can be.

h/t to Conuly.

I very recently commented on the origin of the laughable term "meritocracy," how it was coined as satire, but adopted quite seriously. Since then, just like the phenomenon of noticing a specific model of car once you buy one yourself, I keep seeing the term pop up.

So why not track that?

The book containing the word origin nugget had a lot of bad stuff to say about Google and its lack of diversity. Maybe it's the press riding the book's rising popularity, or maybe author Wachter-Boettcher (say those three words three times fast!) was on to something already on the rise; whatever the case, Google's troubles are getting more press. Concerning diversity training, stuff like this happened:

It began subtly. Coworkers peppered mailing lists and company town halls with questions: What about meritocracy? Isn’t improving diversity lowering the bar? What about viewpoint diversity? Doesn’t this exclude white men?

(I bolded the stupid.)

Perhaps that's where diversity training should begin, by pointing out the original meaning of the M Word, how it is a silly, silly notion that should be used to point out silly, silly people as they mouth that word with an evangelical seriousness, all in an attempt to mask their misgivings about their continued good fortune.

PS. About this entry's title: my neighbor until recently ran a little magazine, where he contributed a column in every issue titled "The Stupidity Watch." Unironic users of the M Word should know that.

You've probably heard the nugget going around lately that using your phone to search a quick tidbit of info uses enough electricity to power two refrigerators. Okay. First things first. Every time we hear a meme like this, I feel we should be immediately skeptical. Seriously, why do we as a species spread information we have not personally checked for accuracy?! Sadly, we do, so I suspect that we are just info spreaders by evolution. Sometimes, like a garden sprinkler snick-snick-snicking needed water onto a parched lawn, we spread good information; other times we spread the greenish-brown stuff that the enormous sprinklers used to spread on the pastures near my childhood home. (NB: I grew up next to a dairy farm.)

( Let's look at what is being spread here. )

Spent yesterday puttering about the yard listening, among other things, to Chris Martenson's Peak Prosperity podcast. In a recent one, he interviewed G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature From Jeckyll Island. Despite the silly name, it has been cited by many in the "alternative" crowd as a major influence on them, especially those with a focus on finance's domination by private banking.

Full disclosure: they're right, at least about how finance has warped the public's understanding of banking. A lot of money has been spent covering up what banks actually do, probably because of the lesson provided by the Bank of North Dakota. If a State (or any other municipality, for that matter) can own a bank, cycling the profits involved in lending directly into the State itself, why would that municipality bother paying interest and fees to private entities? It's a good question, one a few here in Seattle are considering.

But never mind that. Let's get back to Griffin.

In the interview, he revealed something that should be better known considering Wikipedia:

Now, Wikipedia is fine on, I guess scientific information, or... Historical information. As long as it doesn’t impact on the control mechanism of this elite that we’re talking about....

Now, once you get into those areas, then Wikipedia becomes the lapdog of those forces. Because all of the major corporations, I think that’s fair to say. Have to admit though, I haven’t check all of the major corporations to see if this is true. But I believe it is, that all of the major corporations, especially those that are dealing with ideas and products that relate on this control mechanism.... I’m talking about money. I’m talking about healthcare and that kind of thing. They have full-time people contracted to monitor Wikipedia 24-7. There’s always somebody from those corporations watching it.

So, the minute any entry is made touching on their sphere of influence.... They immediately change it or correct it. And they have, because they have done that so often, and they’re paid to do it, so they can devote their lives to it. They move up in rank and become editors because they do spend time doing it. And they become the ones who are the gatekeepers for the information on Wikipedia.

(I emboldened and deleted removed Martenson's conversational noises.)

Conspiracy in private industry is not unknown, of course. What turned Griffin on to this, he says, was a whistle-blower, one who called him one day. She said,

"I’m an editor of Wikipedia."... She says, I don’t know if you know it or not, but we’ve become deeply involved in a controversy among the editors at Wikipedia. I said, really? Over what? She says, over you....

Me? Why me? She said, well, she said, we didn’t know anything about you, but we thought when we saw your biographical information, the way it was being changed, we thought it was curious. So, we started to look into it. And we thought that it was very biased on the part of a small group of other editors in our organization....

So, we started to challenge it. And she said, if you’re interested, she said, it’s all on the internet. Most people don’t know, but the challenging mechanism by which one editor challenges the other is all available if you know the codes to get into the back room.... So, she gave me the codes. And my gosh, this is a roaring fight going on.... It was like a cat and dog fight over me.

I thought, well, that’s interesting. So, anyway, they fight, she lost the battle. She and her friend were told that if they didn’t drop this line of argument, they would no longer be qualified as editors.

(I did it... again.)

This fact that there are professionals out there who do nothing but scrub new media for the benefit of their employers should come as no surprise to anyone. That these industries can afford enough people to do the job that they insinuate themselves into that new media, also not surprising. Where billions of dollars are at stake, a few tens of thousands a year makes for a worthy hedge investment.

And so, today, we have Griffin's name somewhat tarnished with the following: "G. Edward Griffin (born November 7, 1931) is an American far-right conspiracy theorist, author, lecturer, and filmmaker." And indeed, given the bulk of his views, I would say that this description seems accurate.

For even though he is absolutely correct in describing the Federal Reserve's function, those other items of his interest? Holy crap. HIV/AIDS denial? Climate Change denial?! What the flying fuck?

And that got me to thinking. He has experienced a life changing event few get even close to witnessing: the discovery of a for-realz practice that, if broadened beyond private industry, could do wonders for our civilization.

And the blow back he got from the literally vested interests must have put the whammy-jammy on his brain, perhaps causing him to see conspiracy freakin' everywhere.

I must say, though, the interview was entertaining in Martenson's response to some of Griffin's nonsense. When he came out and started ticking off the Climate Change Denial talking points, Martenson, a phD scientist himself, got very polite. I like what commenter ParaDime had to say:

Griffin appears to be in the global warming skeptic camp. Chris handled this part of the interview in a gentle way, but did gingerly probe at the possibility that "faith-based skepticism" (my words, not his) might be putting in an appearance.

Yup.

I'll be the first to admit that most primary and even secondary educations are inadequate. No, scratch that: they are adequate for most things; for some things, they completely miss the point, because to come to the point they would have to address uncomfortable facts and what school wants to deal with uncomfortable stuff? That's just unnecessary.

So in school I learned almost nothing about Vietnam—how it started, reasons the country was even involved—even though many of my classmates had fathers and uncles still deployed there. We learned of old wars, and of course of the big one, WWII; but teachers shied away from even mentioning 'Nam, lest some student go home and mention the mention, leading to a shitstorm from one side of the kerfuffle or the other.

It turns out one of the biggest taboos of our history went back a bit farther to the Civil War. And these taboos, according to a fascinating article, regard the Dark Period after the Confederate Surrender, specifically how this period leads to, of all things, the Tea Party.( To the Dark Age! )

X-Posted to liberal.

Okay, folks, you want political correctness*? I've got political correctness.



You've undoubtedly seen this, haven't you? Good. Everyone now knows that this icon is a symbol designated by the international community to indicate wheelchair accessability (as defined by international parameters). Internationally recognized iconography is, in my most un-humble opinion, of paramount importance for encouraging the exchange of people and their ideas across the face of this fine oblate spheriod.

( Others are not so certain. )

*"Political Correctness" is an oxymoron. A "political" decision is necessarily a compromise between opposing points of interest and involvement in any given subject, while a "correct" decision can only be accurate, not accommodating.

X-Posted to talk_politics.

Over five years ago, I wrote an LJ entry provocatively titled "The Hate Comes First". The title came from an article that I quoted regarding the psychological phenomenon called "splitting." ( Shall we review? )

I may have found some answers to why I feel the way I do and, perhaps more importantly, why others just a few years older than me feel the way they do. Ah, but that will have to wait for another rambling of mine at a later date.

X-Posted to talk_politics.

Just caught an episode of This American Life called "Unfit For Work: The Startling Rise Of Disability In America". It turns out those on disability don't get counted on the unemployment roles (since, of course, they are classed as unable to work). ( It gets interesting! )

X-posted to talk_politics.

Just came across this disturbing but hardly surprising article about a religious effort to politicize evangelical pastors:

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Hundreds of conservative pastors in Iowa received the enticing invitation. Signed by Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential contender, it invited the pastors and their spouses to an expenses-paid, two-day Pastors’ Policy Briefing at a Sheraton hotel.

Nearly 400 Iowa ministers and many of their spouses accepted, filling a ballroom here on March 24 and 25. Through an evening banquet and long sessions, they heard speakers deplore a secular assault on evangelical Christian verities like the sanctity of male-female marriage, the humanity of the unborn and the divine right to limited government.

That last sentence, of course, is rife with irony, perhaps even an irony intended by the reporter. How can the "limited government" to which we seem to have a right enforce both sanctity on marriage standards and unborn humanity? Wouldn't such a limited government avoid such personal life meddling?

What got me, though, was not the standard tropes trotted out by the un-Christian right (as judged by comparing their message to the actual teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament). No, I found a little detail buried near the end far more disturbing:

The audience heard how to push their flocks to register and vote along “biblical principles” without running afoul of tax laws against endorsing candidates from the pulpit.

(I testified boldly.)

This, folks, is how Dubya got to be president for two terms. (The probable election shenanigans and the Supreme Court didn't help, I know.) I remember flipping through the channels and seeing mega-church pastors imploring their flock to avoid the sins of the homos and the baby killers by electing the "right" candidates. Not a word about giving your money to the poor. No mention of the Good Samaritan or how to treat the least amongst you.

And since these seminars are all-expense paid, this single example points out the danger of letting money coagulate in high places where it can be used as it is here, to perpetuate the further future coagulation of wealth far from where Jesus himself would recommended it should go.

By now, you've probably heard about the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a group founded in 1973 that helps conservative legislators with pre-drafted legislation they can handily introduce into their houses and senates. It seems ALEC drafted the anti-collective bargaining bills in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, and had a hand in the 2010 anti-immigration law in Arizona. This is exactly the kind of organization I described in Confused on the Left, Blinded by the Right (Part II, Blinded) over a year and a half ago, and contains many of the same characters. ALEC was, after all, founded by Paul Weyrich, the same fellow that founded the Heritage Foundation (and in the same year).

I mention ALEC because ALEC's little droogies in office in Wisconsin are unhappy about Professor Cronon's guide to the organization and his New York Times history of conservative politics through the ages. In response -- and most likely in retaliation -- they have started legal proceedings to obtain all of his (pertinent) emails that happen to use his UW-Madison email address. The professor explains:

My little ALEC study guide succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Within two days, the blog had received over half a million hits, had been read by tens of thousands of people, had been linked by newspapers all over the United States, and had been visited by people from more than two dozen foreign countries. . . .

What I did not anticipate—though I guess I should have seen it coming, given everything else that has happened in Wisconsin over the past couple months—was the communication that the University of Wisconsin-Madison received on Thursday afternoon, March 17—less than two days after I posted my blog—formally requesting under the state’s Open Records Law copies of all emails sent from or received by my University of Wisconsin—Madison email address pertaining to matters raised in my blog.

The professor has good reasons not to release everything the Wisconsin Republican Party wants, reasons like student and professional confidentiality. The courts should definitely weigh in on which emails seem even pertinent to the file request . . . or even whether the file request is a legitimate use of the Open Records Law. He points out, though, that this is not really the main point:

It doesn’t take a great leap of logic to infer that Mr. Thompson and his colleagues aren’t particularly eager to have a state university professor asking awkward questions about the dealings of state Republicans with the American Legislative Exchange Council. This open records request apparently seemed to Mr. Thompson to be a good way to discourage me from sticking my nose in places he doesn’t think it belongs.

I confess that I’m surprised to find myself in this strange position, since (as I said in my earlier blog post) my professional interest as a historian has always been to research and understand the full spectrum of American political opinion. I often spend as much time defending Republican and conservative points of view to my liberal friends as vice versa. (For what it’s worth, I have never belonged to either party.) But Mr. Thompson obviously read my blog post as an all-out attack on the interests of his party, and his open records request seems designed to give him what he hopes will be ammunition he can use to embarrass, undermine, and ultimately silence me.

One obvious conclusion I draw is that my study guide about the role of ALEC in Wisconsin politics must come pretty close to hitting a bull’s-eye. Why else would the Republican Party of Wisconsin feel the need to single out a lone university professor for such uncomfortable attention?

The professor's posts are long, but well worth the read. I hope to read or hear of this in my local main-stream media news, but in the meantime I'll not be holding my breath.


Kerfuffle via Pharyngula.