Weapon of mass dissent.

Well-written ideas taken out of context (and order):

"All stories need characters."

"Extreme frat/sorority party coverage could work..."

"Sell me on your idea. The writing is almost secondary to the idea."

"Queries should be short, punchy, creative, descriptive, about 4-5 paragraphs maximum."

"No fiction."

"An example of a college tie-in story that I recently bought is a 1000-word piece about two environmental studies grads from Middlebury College in Vermont who built a bus that ran off used vegetable oil and set off to drive across the U.S. and Mexico. Their goal: to live green & get laid. Mission accomplished."

"No I-got-drunk-&-laid stories. (Everyone gets drunk & laid in college. That's why we go.)"

"If you really feel you must query articles like this, they have to be unusually compelling or scandalous..."

"And yes, you must publish using your own name."

"All stories need to grab the reader straightaway..."

"...have a buildup of dramatic...tension."

"...followed by a con.............c........ccclusion. "

From "Hustler Magazine seeks college writers", listing on Craigslist.org.

# posted by Sqb. @ 4/23/2005 12:07:00 PM 2 comments

I genuinely believe that technology will hyperaccelerate in the coming fifteen years, so rapidly that those of us who remember televisions, videocassettes, condoms, and CDs will be "old coots" at 36.

When it comes to communication technology, I also believe that media have epistemological weight. That is, I think that different ways of communicating promote different ways of thinking: television facilitates passive reception of ideas, and the cell phone reconceptualizes 'instantaneous' interpersonal communication, for examples.

These guys put together a five- or six-minute long Flash movie about the future of internet technology. It is silly. But it is also thought-provoking; doesn't it imply that technology is out of our control?

I'm back. An April 15 Cato Institute commentary by Patrick Basham examines the role of conservative Catholics in President Bush’s support base. Surprise, surprise: according to Basham, it’s all about values.

You (like I) might know conventionally of the Catholic Democratic vote: that is, for Democrats’ traditional stances in labor, welfare, civil rights, and social programs. (You can find a brief history of the Democratic Party here.)

Among Basham’s more interesting points:

• A terribly cryptic assertion that “the American population is trending toward less religious observance, not more”? Any enlightenment on this would be appreciated, since it’s counter-intuitive at best.
• Catholics are influential because a) they are concentrated in the electoral ‘swing’ zones and b) they are engaging in more activism on a short list of issues—social issues.
• The GOP’s largest gains in the Republican vote? Young males who like the fiscal conservatism.

An October story on PBS debunked the idea of a uniform "Catholic voting bloc". The majority of their voters, said the story, remains pro-choice; and the proportion of single-issue voters (e.g. abortion-only voters) isn't dominant. Catholics don't categorically deny the relevance of the deficit, poverty, or Iraq.

But what seems to be going on is a rift in how these various issues are ranked. Remember that the Vatican opposed the invasion of Iraq; so, too, did many Catholics. Some consider abortion a front-and-center issue; Catholics seem to differ in terms of how central.

The PBS story really hit home the importance of Catholic location in swing states. Said Ralph Reed of the Bush-Cheney campaign, "And if you look at the states that will decide the outcome of this election--particularly the Great Lakes states of Wisconsin and Minnesota and Michigan and Ohio--those states, they're high-percentage Catholic states."

Also crucial, reports this April 8 CNN story, is the distinction between Catholic churchgoers and less observant Catholics. (Liberals go to church less often than conservatives, said Basham.) Among regular Catholic churchgoers, Bush topped Kerry by 13%, but among less observant Catholics, Kerry topped Bush by 1%.

I think that these numbers fit into my own larger understanding of American politics: that the left's best-case scenario is self-preservation (not growth) and its worst-case scenario is decline. Wisconsin and Minnesota as swing states, California voting in a Republican governor, a popular Republican mayor in New York, and the decreasing importance of policy issues (social programs, spending etc.) with the rise of 'moral majority' issues (gay marriage, abortion) suggest to me that conservatism has found a way to be fundamentally more attractive than its antithesis.

I should conclude this haphazard expose with the following link: in September 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now a favorite for the papacy) said that anti-abortion Catholics can vote for a pro-choice candidate if they agree with that candidate on non-abortion issues. I take this statement to mean that the Vatican disavows single-issue voting, but how do you think it fits in with all this?

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This guy makes the claim that Bush’s plan for Social Security will actually increase benefits: “Personal accounts are part of Social Security, not separate. If history is any indication, using the most conservative assumptions, personal accounts containing stock, bond and money-market mutual funds will grow over the years. The mix of benefits will change, but Social Security benefits including personal accounts will go up, not down.”

Mr. Crane also thinks it ironic “that the people who appear so concerned over the growing wealth gap in America are the one's [sic] who refuse to allow low- and moderate-income Americans to accumulate wealth.” As Crane’s logic goes, the American economy is a “wealth-creation engine”—and as such, poorer people would benefit from investing their Social Security in the market. (My stat, not his: the stock market has historically returned 11% a year, says Motley Fool—but I would love better stats if you have them.) Crane concludes this thought glibly: “How much longer will we deny lower-income Americans an opportunity to participate in the wealth-creation engine known as the U.S. economy?”

Comments: If this first claim is a real possibility, why isn’t the administration milking the heck out of it?...But the idea of note is the second: that it is a sort of economic oppression not to embrace private accounts for Social Security. How can we live with ourselves, knowing that poor people’s retirement benefits have been locked out of the American cash machine?

Ay dios mio. Is this disingenuous? A part of me cannot square the demographics of fiscal conservatism and free-marketism (white, wealthy, male) with the demographics of state beneficiaries (racial, gender, and economic minorities). I, for one, can’t possibly believe that the Bush administration values private accounts even partly for its benefits to the poor. But if it’s genuine: there you have it, a free-market anti-poverty argument.

Post coming soon--Friday-like. Will likely involve Africa, barring some other story turning up and stealing my heart. Hope you are well. Peace, Saqib.

Baaha.

I stoled it from Kaveh (deltakaveh.blogspot.com).

This is a really quite remarkable photojournal done by a lad at UCLA:
http://api.ucla.edu/yoh/Master.cfm?Page=Journal/BandaAceh/Home.cfm

What do you think?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/l05kristof.html?
<

Condom use is indispensable to President Bush's program to combat AIDS in Africa, and the program should do more, by making available female condoms to empower the women.

As a Nigerian psychiatrist and public-health physician who has worked with Nigerian women, I know that African men will not use condoms, not with prostitutes or girlfriends and definitely not with their wives - who, they believe, are their property.

An average African woman cannot say no to her husband: the consequences are a thorough beating or divorce, and most African women cannot afford divorce. Unlike their Western sisters, they would not be given child support. And with no social welfare services to assist them in caring for their children, they would become destitute. At the same time, their culture would blame them for not holding on to their husbands.

Yes, in Africa, marriage kills.

Kehinde A. Ayeni, M.D.

Farmington Hills, Mich.

March 30, 2005>>

The writer is responding to Nicholas Kristof's NYTimes editorial on March 30 titled "When Marriage Kills." If you want to read that (for free anyway), try Lexis-Nexis.

Otherwise, Kristof's brevity may say everything it needs to: "The stark reality here is that what kills young women here is often not promiscuity, but marriage. Indeed, just about the deadliest thing a woman in southern Africa can do is get married."

A tale I found in a Singaporean newspaper:
<<
I was holidaying in Phuket with some relatives and friends that fateful night. As it was our last night there, we headed to a pub in Patong for some drinks.

We had hardly warmed our seats when we spotted people racing out of the pub and nearby shops. Soon, everybody was running for his life as news of the earthquake off Sumatra poured in.

We were taken aback by what was happening and were very confused. Our first thought was to link up with my aunt and uncle who were back at the hotel.

We hopped on a tuk-tuk, intending to proceed to the hotel. However, the driver refused to take us to the hotel which faced Karon Beach.

Instead, he insisted on driving us up a hill to safety. What happened next really touched our hearts.

Upon reaching the hilltop, he told us that he would be putting us up at his place for the night till it was safe to go back to the hotel. His house was no bigger than a one-room flat in Singapore. With what little space he and his wife had, they made us feel very much at home and calmed us down.

Understanding our anxiety to contact my aunt and uncle as well as our relatives in Singapore, the tuk-tuk driver went out of his way to learn how to make the calls.

Later he rode out on his bike to check on the situation at our beach resort. He also drove us out to grab a bite in the wee hours of the morning.

When it was safe for us to return in the morning, he drove us to our hotel even though he had not slept at all.

His kindness left us speechless. It was the first time in my life that someone went this far to extend a helping hand.

I am very grateful to the tuk-tuk driver. His kindness made me understand why Thailand is 'The Land of a Thousand Smiles'.

Matthew Lim Hock Kee>>>

# posted by Sqb. @ 4/03/2005 07:50:00 PM 2 comments