January 2012
1 post
[untitled photo stories - 1]
alley in Tenjin, Fukuoka; Imperial Palace in Kyoto; famed Glico runner in Dotonbori district of Osaka; mural in Nagasaki)
December 2011
3 posts
Nnimmo Bassey interview at the Durban Summit //on...
“Africa, over the years, has been a major source for materials for energy—starting from human beings as energy sources, and moving on to items like palm oil and other energy crops. And right now, we have a major shift to land-grabbing in Africa for the production of bio-fuel and agro-fuels. Everything about Africa is about extracting resources to power industry, to make life...
November 2011
2 posts
informing: Jean Baudrillard on atomic war
“Deterrence precludes war - the archaic violence of expanding systems. Deterrence itself is the neutral, implosive violence of metastable systems or systems in involution. There is no longer a subject of deterrence, nor an adversary nor a strategy - it is a planetary structure of the annihilation of stakes. Atomic war, like the Trojan War, will not take place. The risk of nuclear...
Remixing memory: an ongoing methodology
Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) in Kyoto: This photo was taken by my friend Stevie, who was traveling in Japan en route to study Chinese medicine in Nanjing. Remixing this image five months later from my laptop in Austin, it occurs to me that my work to organize the meaning of my research in Japan parallels an aesthetic project. One that involves sorting, categorizing, and editing thousands of...
October 2011
1 post
The Revolution will not be Authored: On...
Social movements revolve on the physicality of the first day, a threshold materializing political intent and counted in the presence of bodies. It might be a defense—of our bodies as realer than digital, an articulated crisis that often adjoins to other sets of politics also navigating our anxiety. In a recent piece in The New Yorker, journalist Malcolm Gladwell confronted the fear of our social...
September 2011
1 post
Return, from Going: the political appropriation of...
Return is visceral. Among other tasks it organizes the body toward some normal, the first shock of re-location progressively routinized in small details, eventually inscrutable. At your first American airport upon return those slow-moving lines are familiarities encountered abruptly, added to your assemblage of pithy comparisons for friends—how things flowed differently, better, where you were....
June 2011
1 post
A geography of Safety: women, hybridity, and...
Is there a geography of safety? Are safe spaces territorial, areas of protection drawn by the boundaries of privacy, the shapes of our homes, in the walkable comfort of “good” neighborhoods and company? Does the body govern its own cartography—with safety locating yet another intersection of gender, sexuality, race, class, and nationality?
I’m taking inspiration for these questions from Jana...
March 2011
2 posts
Militarizing Nostalgia: "Allies" in Libya, Media,...
Does neoliberal media miss the good ol’ days of military yore? In following the coverage of the U.S.-led military intervention in Libya, I’ve been struck by a widespread revival of Allies as a term describing Western coordination. With 2/3rds of the Big Three (plus France) involved, the term not only applies a geographic specificity, but quite importantly, loads a historical symbolism onto the...
For brevity and timeliness
A lot to write, but not quite enough time. For more frequent updates follow me on Twitter: at http://twitter.com/vgshaw
January 2011
2 posts
Perilous family: Amy Chua, Sino-anxiety, and U.S....
With great fervor, news and social media, bloggers, and readers have flocked upon Amy Chua’s controversial article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” which appeared in The Wall Street Journal last week. The article, advertised as an “excerpt” from Chua’s new book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” generated over 7,000 comments, countless blog...
November 2010
2 posts
Congratulations, anonymous commenter!
You just solved the United States’ projected budget deficits of $418 billion and $1,345 billion for 2015 and 2030!
It’s worthwhile to keep a close eye on the phenomenon of crowdsourcing. Not only does crowdsourcing appeal to an American sense of democracy, but it’s amenable to a diversity of forms—which, on top of news media and blogging, includes scientific research and...
Living in "Nowhere": the 20somethings construct in...
A sociologically important function of Facebook is its ability to aggregate issues that networks of people value culturally and socially. Having spent my college days at NYU, my social network is largely New York-centric. Much of what turns up on my Newsfeed is similarly oriented toward the city, and its related stories of NYC’s high cost of living, “delayed” adulthood, and...
September 2010
1 post
August 2010
2 posts
Real life in analog
The New York Times recently published a four-page article about the quest to discover the effects of digital connectedness on brain psychology and social behavior. The article describes a particularly interesting approach as it witnessed a group of social scientists literally retreat into the wilderness of Utah to escape digital influence. The author of the article suggests that the...
April 2010
2 posts
The effects of photojournalism
I haven’t commented much about art or photography in news media, but this sensational photograph caught my eye this evening. (Not embedded to avoid any potential copyright issues.)
The story is about John Hardzog, a cattle rancher who runs a business based on the “sport” of greyhounds hunting coyotes. This photograph of Hardzog with six dogs in a green truck—two of them...
The Census and the cost/benefits of the US prison...
Eric Lotke wrote an interesting article in The Huffington Post today about the 2010 Census and Maryland’s decision to count prisoners for the places where they actually live rather than the districts where the prisons are located.
“Eighteen percent of the population credited to Maryland House of Delegates District 2B (near Hagerstown) is actually incarcerated people shipped in from...
March 2010
1 post
"BAC" to Nature
The high rate of Caesareans in the United States—about 1 in 3 births—is a really big deal, so I’m glad to see that this piece on vaginal births after Caesarean, otherwise known as VBACs, made it to my homepage of the NYTimes.
The article focuses on a hospital run by the Navajo Nation that has been successful with performing a high percentage of VBACs, loosely hinting at some...
Disasters and Relief
The NYTimes’ coverage of Chile’ 8.8-magnitude earthquake makes mention of a disparity in damage between yesterday’s disaster and Haiti’s seismically less-powerful, but vastly more deadly, 7.0-magnitude quake.
The scenes of toppled buildings, overturned cars and bodies being hauled from rubble resembled those from Haiti a month and a half ago. But because of better building...
Feminism, Disability, and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Here are two particularly interesting articles I read in the feminist/academic blogosphere a few days ago. Incidentally, both talk about public health issues related to women and their social lives, but in very different ways.
The first article is from Sociological Images, a blog that raises inquiry about the various images we as individuals and cultures interface with on a daily basis, and what...
February 2010
5 posts
Metaphors of the Cold War
Here’s an elegant pair of metaphors on the ideological and/or psychological processes at work during the Cold War, from Joseph S. Nye, Jr.’s book Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History.
“It was difficult for the Americans to understand the Soviet Union during the Cold War because the Soviet Union was like a black box. American leaders could...
Graphics, feminism, and expiration
Above: An old photo (reworked) of The Curiosity Index, an amazing graphic design project I had the pleasure of encountering this past fall at a reading for Storyscape Journal. In other news, I am looking forward to attending this tomorrow: Reading: Hester Eisenstein “Feminism Seduced” With Silvia Federici In “Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World,”...
January 2010
5 posts
The POTUS at the SOTU
I’m often suspicious of what I think could be called pop journalism (not to be confused with a Canadian magazine on media and pop culture), a style of personality- and entertainment-oriented reporting that seems to have gained traction in mainstream news media over the past few years. I am talking about news writing that seems more concerned with selling a “mood” than providing...
Talking about Haiti
In the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake, a lot of talk has (re)surfaced on the role of the country’s massive debt in creating this disaster. This debt was levied illegally onto the newly-independent Haiti by France and other colonial powers in exchange for diplomatic recognition. Arguably, the severity of this debt prevented Haiti from developing the necessary...
Harry Reid's Boo Boo
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic Senator from Nevada, publicly apologized yesterday for some groan-worthy comments about Obama that are set to be released on Monday in Game Change, a book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2008 Presidential Election. Made back in 2008, Reid referred to the then presidential hopeful as “light-skinned” and “with no Negro...
"Antisocial and perhaps amoral"
Roger Lowenstein, author of The End of Wall Street (due out in April), wrote an incredibly interesting article in today’s New York Times about a growing trend among homeowners—that is, to cut their losses and voluntarily default on their mortgages.
Lowenstein takes an interesting look at how morality shapes mortgage trends in consumer behavior and as well as in the industry’s...
Welcome to '10s
Happy New Year! My 2010 started auspiciously, with the most delicious omelette in the history of my eating at Greenpoint Coffeehouse. Airy and savory, with goat cheese and swiss chard. Delicious.
Paul Krugman, economist-columnist for the New York Times, ushered readers into the new year with an article predicting China’s continued economic ascent and impending super powerness, intently...
December 2009
4 posts
The inner minds of politicians
Gail Collins wrote an interesting piece that appeared in the New York Times today, on Senator Joe Lieberman’s seeming betrayal of his liberal-independent roots, particularly notable in the contrast in his previous and current stance on health care reform.
“Let’s look at our two failed-national-candidate models. You can move on, and try to make yourself useful (Kerry, Al Gore). Or you...
Alabama by Neil Young
A great combination
A great combination: Neil Young’s album Harvest and reading Cary Tennis’ Since You Asked column on Salon.com. Separately and jointly, these two talents tap into some of our most human sensibilities and sufferings.
Far from giving us a recipe to corrective, or even, practical action, Cary Tennis is a bit like a pastor for a secular and urbane readership—elevating advice to both a...
Agitation and/or preparation in the media
I was thinking about the upcoming surge today, and it occurred to me that the language used by mainstream media to describe the US occupation in Afghanistan has shifted dramatically in the last year. Right now, I am seeing a lot of articles throw around the term “eight-year war,” which is awfully strange as this phrasing was rarely used in the seventh, sixth, and fifth...
September 2009
1 post
We Gotta Get Out of This Place by The Animals
August 2009
4 posts
Global Media in Perspective (paper from June 2009)
Are Democrats Better Readers? False Difference in Readability Among Major U.S. News Brands
Shortly following the results of the 2004 Presidential election, a crop of secession-themed groups popped up on Facebook. The purpose of this proposed secession was for the Northeast and West Coast, the regions that had voted primarily for Senator John Kerry, to escape the majority-politics of the...
A new favorite.
Early in the Morning by Peter...
Michael Jackson and Jonathan Horowitz
Article on Michael Jackson, two months after his death.
When I get the chance, I’d like to write more of an in-depth comment on celebrities as social capital—the “ownership” of their personal narratives even, or especially, in death. Or maybe we’re all social capital in some way.
On a separate note, that reminds of a great exhibit I saw at P.S. 1 a few months ago. It’s called The Soul of...
Book Drive Social
The first text post of this blog comes with an announcement. This week I’ve been at work on Book Drive Social, which came about both suddenly and randomly. Some words on this:
Book Drive Social is about the simplicity of tapping into your social communities to get work done. In this case the work is supporting the resources of classrooms in New York City. Many schools in NYC are unacceptably...
July 2009
2 posts
(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave by Martha Reeves &...
May 2009
15 posts
Yakety Yak by The Coasters
Dirty Whirl by TV On The Radio
