Twitter: I do not know

I keep coming back to Twitter. After less than a year using it, I am still wondering about it. It is just random no-sense; it is the broadcasting of trivial information; it is a place for quick conversations; it is a news center; it is becoming a PR tool for companies; and so on. It is many things and navigating all of them can be difficult. In my case, I am following more than 250 people: many news organizations and journalists; some people in Bogotá (Medellín and other parts of Colombia); some people in London connected to the Guardian (or it seems); entrepreneurs with interest in social network tools; and random people here and there who broadcast little pieces of their lives. In some cases, I reply to some of them and they reply back——in one case, we started a conversation and it suddenly came to a stop: this follower never replied back yet did not block me; we are still following each other but do not participate in conversations. I do not have a clue about what happened. In another case, I replied back and to this day we engaged in little conversations. I really do not know where Twitter is going (it does not matter) and do not know where I am going paying attention to it. I like how I get informed about things not just about news but about websites, recipes, ideas, ways of saying things, and so on. Yet I am not sure about it. I am not sure.

Racist Incidents After Obama's Victory

This comes in the news: "From California to Maine, police have documented a range of [racist] incidents, including vandalism, threats and at least one physical attack. There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes." These are worrisome signs. We are in this together and Obama's election speaks about a better place----for everybody.

Science/Social Science Thinking

Feynman, 1962: "The purpose of scientific thought is to predict what will happen in given experimental circumstances. All the philosophical discussion is an evasion of the point. The mesons do not go at the speed of light." (Note: "In particle physics, a meson is a strongly interacting boson—that is, a hadron with integer spin."——wikipedia, "Mason") I discussed the difference between scientific thought and social-scientific thought in my history of class a few meetings ago. My students were right in pointing out that there are different types of sciences (biology and physics, for instance) and different types of social sciences (history and economics, for instance) and that scientific thought is one things for physics and another for geology. At the end, I mentioned that ways of thinking were connected to communities that pose and resolve problems in particular ways and that our respective training consist in learning/becoming a member of a particular community. Feynman's community understands things that I do not know: speed of light and mesons (and hadrod, integer spin, and boson).

Twitter and Academics

I have been using twitter (a micro-blogging tool) for almost six months or so. I am following a number of people connected to particular areas of interest: a group of journalists, a group of Colombians (in Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali), a group of newspapers, a group of social-network entrepreneurs (or whatever they call themselves), a group of postgraduate students; a group of moms working from home, a group of people connected to NASA and other space programs (in Europe), and one or two singers and actors. I have learned to enjoy the conversations that take place on twitter: I get information (from newspapers and journalists) and I get to hear conversations about politics, cooking, teenagers, lack of inspiration for this or that, and about working projects in Bogotá.

I wonder why there are not more people from the academic world using it. It could be that I have not looked well in twitterland but so far I have only found a couple of people in journalism schools not body in history (my area). When I first began interested in twitter, I sent an email to a group of colleagues in history: two of them opened accounts but they stopped using it few days later. I could not convince my colleagues to use it (not that I tried hard: I myself did not know how to use it) but my sense is that very few people in the academy is using it. I think it could be a great tool to connect people in our areas of expertise to twitte about the books we are reading, the problems we are having with our writing, or just about our lives in the classroom, and outside. Perhaps in a year or so the circle will start to include those in the academic world.

Blogging

Blogging has been more difficult for me than I expected because, first, I have not been able to find my voice for this kind of writing and the topics/themes I would like to cover. On the themes/topics, I keep moving the "field": is it about themes related to my teaching? Yes. Is it about every day frames----risotto, geese flying, the snow? Um, yes but not really. The other difficulty is discipline to write here with consistency. My sense is that the two issues are related: since I am not sure about the themes, I do not find the time to write here. To address these problems, I will be blogging my conversations with the letters of Mr. Richard Feynman edited by his daughter in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track. I like them for three reasons: they are funny, they are honest, and they are about interesting things. By the way, I am reading them now because I am teaching my history of science class and I am trying to understand how scientist think----I am guessing, Feynman would say, "I do not know how scientists think, this is how I think." Fair enough.

Reality

The basis of reality is memory (short-term/long-term memory): without memory there is no way of establishing your own reality, our own reality. If I can not remember the wall behind me, I can not establish the reality of this room.

Risotto and life

Yesterday I made risotto with shrimps and cilantro. The key for cooking rice is the broth, so I had made a chicken broth in the morning. I had high expectations because I had not made rissoto in a long time. In my risottos I use wine and garlic (nothing especial about that the recipe calls for them) and chicken broth, the rest is whatever I want to put on it. When I finished pouring the broth and adding the shrimps, green onions, celery, and cilantro I tested it and I did not like it. It lacked flavor. Cooking, I tell my children, is about being patient, about mixing flavors, about caring for the ingredients, about joy: I put all of those in this risotto and it did not work out. I think I missed the salt when I made the chicken broth: life is in the details.

Dolls and the Iraq War

Yesterday, my daughter and her friend were playing dolls; they were pretending that one of the dolls was at the hospital. My daughter said, "There is a war in Iraq, let's pretend she is at the hospital in Iraq." After a short silence, her friend responded, "No, let's pretend they belong to a different time." They continued with their conversation. They sounded striking similar to us, adults, in our conversations about this war of choice——if we talk about it.

#Suspending all Activites

McCain is suspending the debate with Obama, he explains that this is because he is going to Washington to discuss the financial crisis. Um. Is he trying to play the heroe? Did he panic? In either case, he has made a mistake: the debates are important and the country needs to hear the candidates, face to face, and make a decision as to whom would be our best leader. I do not have a doubt about it, and I am suspending all activities till the crisis is over.

Invasions and Generations

Between 1970 and 2003, the USA has invaded five countries——in what the US calls "operations":

2003: Iraq: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

1994: Haiti: Operation Uphold Democracy.

1989: Panama: Operation Just Cause.

1983: Granada: Operation Urgent Fury.

1970: Cambodia, part of the Vietnam War, not particular name.

People who were in their 20s in the 1970s have witnessed five invasions already. These people are now in their 50s and their children, if they were born in the 1980s, are now in their twenties (the same age of their parents when the invasion of Cambodia)——and an invasion has taken place every six years since they were born in the 1980s. It means that we are used to invading other countries, that we think it is something this country does as a matter of course.

Blogs

I am back to my blog. I was quite busy this week after my trip to Madrid. I met not only scholars in the history of alchemy but also practitioners of alchemy (distillation practices). This group came from Canada, USA, Germany, England, and Spain and they knew their symbols and recipes and talked about energy fields and lunar influences. The existence of this group was a surprise to me: I did not know there were practitioners of this art today.

Note: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is halted for the time being. There was an electric problem and a magnet failure. Too bad: I was hoping to get some answer about the origins of the universe but I will have to wait a little longer.

Economic Intervention

The Bush Administration is now in conversations with Congress to design $700 billion intervention plat to rescue the financial system. The Chavez administration has been intervening in the Venezuelan economy for some time now. As mentioned in previous posts, the Bush and Chavez administration share a number of striking similarities: both have placed their administration above their respective constitutions; both had bend the system to create a more powerful executive; and now both have intervened the economy. My sense is that their similarites come from the fact that both administrations are ideologically driven.

Colombia

I recently came back from Colombia. Colombia seems to be doing better now than few years ago. People is traveling within the country. Foreigners are coming back to the country, especially from Europe. During a visit to a tropical jungle in near the Magdalena River, I met a women from Wales, England, who was traveling by herself and who mentioned that Colombia is once again a destination for Europeans interested in traveling in South America (in that group I met there were four people from Colombia, two people from England, and one from Israel). In cities like Bogotá, the traffic is not as bad as it used to be some years ago. Authorities in Bogotá had implemented the "pico y placa" system (restricting the circulation of some cars according to their last digit of the license plate) and the Transmilenio (a bus transit rapid system), which had helped solving some of the transportation problems of Bogotá. In terms of violence (guerrillas and paramilitares), the government has been hitting hard the FARC, and this group looks very weak today. It is still operating and harming the country but it probably will have to negotiate with the government soon. The paramilitaries are trying to negotiate with the government prision terms and other issues but, lateley, new evidence linking paramilitaries and members of congress and military officers had emerged. At least, the information is coming out. This is also good for the country.

I did enjoy my days in Bogotá.

Food, floods, oil and organic decisions

Yesterday I talked to a friend who mentioned she tries to be self-sufficient in terms of food (and, so she grows her own food). She can not be fully self-sufficient, she explained to me, so she buys from farmers in the area. She said, "food is important to me." I responded, "food is also important for me, and most people, but I am not trying to be self-sufficient. I buy at the supermarket and the farmer's market." I asked her why she is trying to be self-sufficient. She told me she grew up that way. I suppose that explains part of the story. She also told me about a farm in my area (Central New York) that had to close: their owners could not make enough money and sold it. (Someone else commented that the Midwest Floods will affect production of food internally as well as exports) Food and oil prices are still moving up and it is becoming more difficult to pay for organic food (production and transportation): I am not sure how we will negotiate organic food, food prices, and oil prices but it is already changing the dynamics at the counter level.

Twitter II

I have been using twitter for few weeks already. I have read some people refer to it as a community, as utility, as a broadcasting tool. I am still intrigued by it: it is a tool, a medium, to create communities and foster conversations. In many cases, groups of friends and colleagues have created those communities and continue conversations that began in living-rooms, coffee shops, conferences, and offices. There are a number of people like me who began without particular friends or colleagues and navigate the Twitter landscape looking for communities and conversations (the way we do it when we first go to a conference in our discipline or to a party where we do not know most of the people): it is not easy to find those communities and conversations——one person I was following blocked her postings after I asked her about the Argentinian group Les Luthiers. Most people I have reply to have answered and added me to their list of followers but that is usually the extent of it, and that is just fine. So far I liked it but I am still at large.

Blogging your personal life

Blogs seem to have opened this incredible opportunity for almost everybody with a computer to write about almost everything and "publish" it. Those in their 20s, people who have finished college recently and are now at the beginning of their professional lives, seem to have embraced blogs and social networking fully (not that people in their 30s and 40s have not done so themselves but I am guessing there are more people in their 20s blogging than those in their 30s and 40s). They are experimenting with this medium and finding out the ethical and political consequences of their blogging. Ms. Gould tells about her tribulations as she exposed her life and with it the life of others, and the consequences of doing it when it becomes part of the circuit of blog commentators. I am struck by the comments in the NYT to her piece: I only read seven or ten (there are over 700 comments) but they were quite nasty and rude. I am wondering if this tell us something about the kind of readerships (perhaps in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity) that follow the NYT as opposed to the readership that follow blogs. Anyway, here is the piece by Ms. Gould.

Commencement 2008

Sunday was graduation day at my institution. It rained and rained and we (students, parents, and faculty) sat throughout the ceremony: some of us shrank a little bit, just enough to make our clothes a little bit looser. The 08 graduates are moving into a complicated world (but, then again, who has not): a war with no end in sight; gas prices rising; food prices also rising; and a dollar weak and weaker. It is a world full of possibilities (like the world we moved in when we graduated, of course): the first African American president; social networkings are beginning to dominate the Internet (and they have embraced them); and the media is becoming medias and networks. I do not know where this generation is going but I am guessing is taking our world into very interesting places. Good luck, Class of 08.

Twitter Moment, Twitter Events

A "Twitter Moment" is an ordinary moment that becomes interesting and public by blogging it; or it is just an ordinary moment that becomes public. Whatever it is, a twitter moment is now a temporal category. I am intrigued by Twitter. I began a week or so ago: I opened my account after reading about a professor who used it in his class. I thought I would give it a try during the Summer and then, perhaps, try it in my seminars in the Fall. Here I am experimenting with Twitter. Most people I have asked about it in my circle of friends and co-workers do not know about it (some have heard about it but nobody knew anything concrete about it), so I am following complete strangers. I am following about 30-something people: I decided to follow people involved in computer and social network activities (investors, journalists, entrepreneurs) to get a sense of what is going on in that part of the world; I follow also people in Colombia (Bogotá) and in California (Bay Area), two areas to which I am particularly attached to; and I am also following journalists and professors (but I have not found many professors yet).

After my short experience with Twitter I can say two things about it. First, Twitter breaks the hierarchies and the borders between people and groups. I am now "listening" to conversations among journalists, entrepreneurs, computer and social networking people, people living in Colombia, California, and Spain. Twitter erases, somehow, the professional and geographical barriers as well as the social, economic, and cultural, and age fences among groups and individual people. Perhaps this is what fascinates me about Twitter. Second, twitter moments and events lack context. It is hard to follow some of the conversations because there is no context in most of the postings. Perhaps making sense of some of the postings would be a matter of learning, for the reader, how to interpret them, and for the author, how to provide clues for the context.

Twitter takes the leveling of the field a step further because it creates a "place" for conversations beyond our disciplines, professions, geographical locations, age, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. This is the direction of social networking——and I am not an expert.

Olbermann: He is right but we are still in the same place. Why?

Journeys and Destinations

I tell my students that their thinking process (in general) do not belong to the papers they write for me: a paper is about (in general) the argument and the evidence, not about their actual thinking process. The kind of thing I am doing here does not belong to a paper about the development of empirical practices at the House of Trade (Casa de la Contratacion) in Seville, Spain between 1520s and 1570s. I am still uncertain about the rules of this (my) blog; I am still uncertain about the rules of my twitter (depapel) postings. I am learning about these tools; I like them, but I still feel I am much more concerned with the thinking process than the result of the process: it is true, however, that I prefer the journey.

A Beautiful Game

Via discurse.net

Our Times or Only This Day?

From the storm in Burma to the civil war(?) in Lebanon, high oil prices, the war (of choice) in Iraq, the political situation in Zimbabwe, the Darfur tragedy, the shaky economy in the USA, the rise in food prices, we are facing difficult times at the global, regional, and local levels. These mega-events, events that seem to be outside our control, come on top (or behind or below) our own personal-size events: a reduced income, cancer, the lost of a job, difficulties at school or at the office, a lover who-is-not such-anymore. Sometimes I began my day with the wrong feet; other, it seems, most of us began our day with the wrong feet. Is there some sort of global crisis taking place before our eyes?

Cutting Down a Tree

My neighbors decided to cut down the tree on their backyard——it had become a hazard. It was a beautiful, tall, old pine tree. I could hear the sawing machines outside while I was working when Lola came running into my studio, “papá, papá, come and see.” “What?” “Ven, ven,” she said as she grabbed my hand and took my flying to the door: they had just cut the top half of the tree and the crane had lifted and put it down in the middle of the street. A number of people cut the branches, while others fed the branches into the chipper, and turned the tree, or at least part of it, into mulch. I did not see what happened with the logs. Lola and I were outside for few minutes while we witnessed this event. All of it while in North Carolina, Clinton was losing and Obama was winning the election and becoming (I believe) the next presidential candidate for the Democratic party. A tree went down in Macondo, NY, and a great candidate is moving closer to the nomination: life never goes on the same.

The Rest on the Rise

Are we witnessing the Rise of the Rest? Are we witnessing a reconfiguration of historical forces (political, social, cultural, and economic forces)?

"Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories."

To this list I would add the USA's (decreased) international standing. In the American countries (for instance, south of Mexico), the influence of the USA has been historically very strong. Today, it is not longer the case. Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Chile, Ecuador and Argentina had been moving slowly outside the influence of the USA, in particular, during the last eight years. The only exception to this pattern is Colombia, which is closely linked to the USA via drugs (and so Colombia and the USA share a common problem).

Then the USA is beginning to shed its superpower cloak not only in symbolic terms (the tallest building and the largest mall) but in concrete terms (the waning of its influence in Asia and Latin America). It is still a military superpower: but there are limits to the use of this power (a lesson learned? in Iraq). It does not mean that the US is not a power anymore. On the contrary, it is still a power but a power among other (emerging) powers: in a sense, we are going back to normal (balance of powers as oppose to a superpower): the Rest on the Rise.

Oil, War, and Strategies

The US War on Terrorism seems to be part of a larger strategy to control (or have military access to) oil and gas fields in the Middle East and Central Asia (the Greater Middle East) by establishing small air bases in that area. The Manas Air Base, in Kyrgyzstan, serves as a model of the bases the US is establishing there:

"at Manas Air Base, nestled in a valley surrounded by the snowcapped, 12,000-ft. peaks of the Ala-too Mountains (..., s)ome 1,100 airmen are stationed at the base, which lies east of the city of Bishkek. Since 2001, the strategic air hub has executed some 18,000 missions - ranging from early combat flights by fighter planes during the Afghanistan war to the current logistical runs transporting troops, cargo, and refueling."

As the commentator, Juan Cole, explains: "the US is seeking to encompass the "Greater Middle East" with small bases, each with 1,000 to 3,000 personnel. In emergencies, these bases could quickly swell to 40,000. Like a lily pad, they can "open up" and accommodate a landing frog." "If you include the Caspian region, Tengiz, and the gas reserves in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan along with what is in the Persian Gulf, the vast majority of proven oil and gas reserves are in this circle of
crisis."

What else is new?

Making Sense of a Hispanic USA

The Hispanic population is increasing and the increase between 2006 and 2007 came from births. The economic consequences of this increase are important for the US economy:

"As Americans age and the baby boom generation retires, Hispanics may help buttress the economy and the Social Security system. The average white woman in the U.S. has 1.8 children, which is under the replacement rate of 2.1 necessary to maintain a stable population. Hispanic women, meanwhile, give birth on average to 2.8 children." ""If you are pro-economic growth, you must be pro-immigration and pro-Hispanic, because we don't have the workers," says Donald Terry, a senior official at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington."

The political consequences of this increase are also important:

"Anyone who does the math knows that America is on track to become a white-minority nation in three to four decades. Yet if there’s any coherent message to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah [a reference to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's recent declarations], it’s that this nation’s perennially promised candid conversation on race has yet to begin." This conversation already began with the Civil Rights movement; perhaps, what we need is a conversation on class——poverty is at the intersection of many of the disadvantages and lack of opportunities for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos.

The rock in the yard

A few days ago, I was taking the garbage out to the curb. On the yard I found a small rock. I thought it could harm my mowing machine so I took it and put it into the garbage can. I thought whoever put it there, my children playing probably, did not think about the consequences of leaving it there, which is hard because there is always a set of unintended consequences in our acts. This blog’s entry is a consequence of the rock in the yard. I think the entries on this blog are like the rock on my yard left by children (but I do not know for sure) playing around.

Raining

Today in Macondo, NY, it rained for most of the day. “Qué llueva, qué llueva, la vieja está en la cueva” sang my memory on and off throughout the day. My son and I had our radio show——our last show for the semester. He decided to play Manu Chao’s La Despedida (as in our despedida from the audience: “Ya estoy curado, anestesiado/ya me he olvidado de ti [audience]/Hoy me despido/de tú ausencia/ya estoy en paz...”). I asked my daughter if she thought we remember everything that happened in our lives. She answered, “It depends.” “It depends? What do you mean?” “Well, if you have a very good memory, you could.” I guess I am glad I do not have a very good memory.

Playing Time

In the morning, I coached my daughter’s football (as in soccer) team. I told them soccer was called football (as in fútbol) almost everywhere else in the world (but the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). If they travel one day outside the USA, they will know, when people talks about football, they mean people hitting a ball with their feet. Traveling is about gaining familiarity with new vocabularies, with new ways of mixing ingredients, and with types of lights and colors unimaginable. Cubans, it seams, will be able to travel soon, if the reforms in traveling are implemented as the Cuban government intends to do. The team (it was our first meeting) did well. Later, my daughter an I played in the backyard. We had a beautiful day in Macondo, NY.

Bed Time

I just put my daughter in bed. She was tired; we did not read tonight. It was my night to decide the reading. Oh, well. Yesterday was World Book Day (April 23), and Amsterdam, Holland, succeeded Bogotá, Colombia, as the World Book Capital. On the 23rd of April 1616 the writers Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Miguel de Cervantes, and William Shakespeare died and that is why April 23 is World Book Day. Santo Domingo, Bogotá, and Buenos Aires opened book fairs this week. I will read tomorrow to my daughter before going to bed. In Macondo, NY, the night is cold and clear. I can hear the students walking along the streets (this is a small college town). Earlier today, I saw my neighbor’s daughter crying on their porch: tomorrow her mother begins radiation for her cancer. I hope for the best.