Mobilizations everywhere

Everywhere lately we have been seeing big, sudden and sometimes terribly violent rallies of angry people — the worst, with the deadliest consequences, in Benghazi, Cairo and other parts of the Islamic world beginning September 11, but almost simultaneously in Barcelona (also September 11), Madrid and Lisbon (both with huge rallies on September 15), Moscow and across China. Very different movements, but the fact that they are all happening now reflects the conjunction of two global phenomena: The explosion of electronic media, making it vastly easier to convoke a crowd, and deteriorating economic conditions everwhere.

About those violent assaults on U.S. embassies in Muslim countries that began on September 11, I think Ross Douthat is right about the immediate cause: it was not about a movie that, as far as we know, doesn't even exist (nobody seems to have seen any more than a 14-minute trailer) — though the video was sure convenient for the assailants.
 
It’s Not About the Video - NYTimes.com

The question remains, though: Why did such large numbers of angry people respond? Focusing on the video has got us into a useless and damaging debate about whether we should limit "blasphemy," a concept that has no place in a free society. It also encourages the notion that Muslims are generally crazed fanatics easily aroused if you push their sacred buttons. Those of us who are a little older remember when the really big political movement in Egypt and from there to other parts of the Arab world was entirely secular — Nasser and with his call for pan-Arabism could muster enormous enthusiastic crowds, even without Twitter or SMS. Religious fanaticism is not genetic or eternal, but a circumstantial response to some very dramatic circumstances.

Here, since I claim no special expertise on the region, all I want to offer is two lines of investigation to identify the forces that are inducing people to look for radical solutions. We should first look at demographics, and then who those interplay with economics, and only then do the particular doctrines of preachers, ulemas and other agitators become relevant. In the Arab world, and in almost all other Islamic countries as well, population has been growing too fast to be absorbed in a rigid, and closed, opportunity system, and the economic crisis— including in parts of the Near East, a long-lasting drought that has driven more and more people to the overcrowded cities, creating greater density of desperate folks.

There are other possible answers to the economic crisis, and other ways to mobilize mass discontent. Limiting anybody's freedom of expression, as in the proposed legislation to outlaw "blasphemy" as in Tunis, is just going to delay finding such a solution. We need the freest debate possible to find those answers.

I hope to say something about those other mobilizations (Spain, Portugal, and Catalonia among them) in future notes — not because I know the answers, but at least to clarify our questions, what is really at stake and what can we do about the really serious world problems?

Worried about South Africa? We should be

Appalling things have been happening in that country, violence and corruption that seem to betray the great hopes that came with the ending of apartheid. South Africa is important not just because of its size and economy and its example to the whole African continent, but as a vast social experiment showing what human beings with courage and vision can do — and what can happen to us when we lose that vision.

Daily Maverick - An open letter to Cosatu

The Story of "Fired up! Ready to go!" - Obama for America 2012 - YouTube

The Story of "Fired up! Ready to go!" - Obama for America 2012 - YouTube

Got me fired up. How 'bout you?

Nothing lasts forever — not even eternity

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nothing lasts forever — not even eternity, as we learned from Steven Hawking a few years ago. The recent discovery of what may be the Higgs boson made me aware again of how little I understand about the universe. Or even about the questions now being posed by cosmologists. Greene makes it all about as clear as it can possibly be to someone — like me — who can't follow the math. For those who can follow it, he offers many of the necessary equations in the endnotes, which also include numerous references for further reading. To substitute for the math, Greene uses metaphors, generally pretty silly ones — Bart Simpson on a supersonic skateboard, for example — that at least give us an idea of, for example, what Einstein meant about space-time in the general theory of relativity. And then beyond Einstein, to quantum mechanics, and why the world and the whole universe appear to us in only three space dimensions (forward and back, side to side, up and down) and one time dimension, when quantum theory, confirmed experimentally, demonstrates that there must be ten space dimensions (but still only one time dimension). Is our universe really a kind of hologram projected by forces outside it, that is, beyond the universe we are capable of perceiving directly? Could be; Greene considers that hypothesis as at least plausible. And how did it all, everything, begin? Or did it? Was the Big Bang, the initial expansion of matter and energy that set everything in motion, just a new configuration of energy that is always, and that therefore may have been dispersed in some other entropic system(s), and may again — if our universe ever reaches the limit of its continuing expansion — shrink to extreme density, preparatory to a new explosion ("Big Bang") some billions of years hence? It took me weeks to get through this book, not because it was unclear, but because the news about the universe seemed so strange, so oddly contrary to our ordinary experience, that I had to keep checking back to re-understand parts of earlier chapters necessary for following the later ones. I remain amazed, and inspired with new speculations about philosophy and existence and what we do and cannot know. Guess it's time for me to learn some math.

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Romney Aides Scratch Their Heads Over Eastwood’s Speech - NYTimes.com

Romney Aides Scratch Their Heads Over Eastwood’s Speech - NYTimes.com

This is SO bad. Ol' Clint has never been a clear thinker, but here he's not even a decent performer. And the thoughts that come out of his rambling are just vague expressions of dislike of things he can't understand. And alas, he had an audience of nonthinkers to applaud him. (And he makes fun of Biden as an intellectual — good thing for Clint that he was talking to an empty chair that couldn't talk back.)

Ain't gonna let no (Romney, Ryan, fill in the blank) turn me roun'

Loved this! An antidote to the rhetoric spilling out of the Republican convention. Thanks to Anita Jones for reminding us of this event (she's right: we missed it the first time) and to Pete de Lissovoy for pointing me to Anita's blog.
 
Freedom Singers Performance at the White House in 2010 - Peach Seed Monkey

A "Look at me!" contest

They charge $40 to read your first chapter, $200 if you want them to read the whole novel. I suspect the chances of "winning" may be close to 100%, but the prize is not publication but a videotaped reading — an ego massage for the author, maybe, if you're desperate for attention, but not much use for publication. Also, this is one of the ugliest websites I've seen lately, and even with proof-reading errors. (“Just VOTED on of the top festivals in the world today!”)

1st CHAPTER and FULL NOVEL BOOK CONTEST - Submit the 1st chapter or entire novel to the writing festival

Real writers can do better than that.

"Welcome to My Contri" now available as e-book

A new, expanded edition of what The New York Times Book Review described as a “frequently powerful collection of short stories" of Latin America that "leaves us thoroughly wrung out — and aware that we are in the presence of a formidable new writer.” 
Smashwords — Welcome to My Contri — A book by Geoffrey Fox

Cheap! Only $0.99. I'm hoping for readers, and will welcome your comments on the Smashwords review page.

A publication of the Thoth Books Editorial Collective.

Etgar Keret, “What Do We Have in Our Pockets?” — f a i l b e t t e r . c o m

A charming little story I want to share with you.

Etgar Keret, “What Do We Have in Our Pockets?” — f a i l b e t t e r . c o m

Creating ignorance

They just want to confuse us. Maybe because he sounds so sincere, and because few people bother to check out his misrepresentations, and mostly because he is saying what a lot of people want to believe (no matter that it's utterly false), too many folks cheer him on.

The Most Influential Evangelist You've Never Heard Of : NPR

Suppose (though it's not true) that the founders, including Jefferson, were as conventionally religious as he claims. So what? That was 1787, this is 2012, we have a lot better explanations today of the origin of the universe and everything else. But in fact, even with the more limited knowledge available to them, most of those men were skeptical enough to realize that there were no simple answers, and certainly no sect could claim to have them.