The Public Student

space and time

2010-03-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

I am reading Just Kids and scouring The Missouri Group's News Reporting and Writing guide and freaking out about this summer and freaking out about the April 1 issue.

Things are getting good.

doing my homework

2010-03-07T22:36:00.000-08:00

What kind of blogger am I?

There's an existential question for you. As of late, I've been no kind of blogger at all. But now that the reincarnated MHN is going live, I think it's time to get back in the game.

My fashionable friend Gabby introduced me to Style Rookie, a blog written by Tavi, a 13-year-old who reminds me, in a wonderful way, of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, Enid from Ghost World, Kevin from Home Alone and Ludovic from Ma Vie en Rose. Yes, I'm a fan.

This kid is the type of pop culture blogger who makes people like me want to watch Peter Sellers movies. She's a lot like the 16-year-old bloggers I read when I was 12. Each seemed extraordinarily gifted, with an intimidating range of cultural knowledge, a precocious wit, and an uncanny knack for the Photoshop gag. The fact that all the entries were ungrammatical was part of the charm.

I probably should have become one of those kids who read The Perks of Being a Wallflower the summer before ninth grade and thought they had taste, but I was too humble and, I think, realistic.

I should have dyed my hair red and worn a silver ear cuff. But I decided to do my homework and read Henderson the Rain King instead.

I was weird. I'm just saying...I should have worn that weirdness. I was nervous for some reason.

i think this is what the internet is for

2009-08-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

The Hallway from The Hallway on Vimeo.

Kind of addictive...

2009-07-24T07:37:00.000-07:00

I just made a short video for GazetteNET.com.
It's my first, so lay off.

stength in numbers

2009-07-04T00:22:00.000-07:00

Iranian protesters have showed conservative clerics that freedom is a universal incentive. According to Sarah Lawrence professor Fawaz Gerges, the odds are in their favor, especially because they are young. He writes:

"[Seventy] percent of Iran's population of 72 million people is under the age of 30. Despite recent setbacks, they will probably own Iran's future."
CNN via TakePart.com

TakePart.com's Travis Kaya has authored a compelling guide to Four Freedom Movements You Should Know About This Independence Day, which includes Iran, China, Burma and Zimbabwe.

needs more anecdotes and lomography

2009-06-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

Why aren't there more communities for bloggers seeking constructive criticism? The only reason I have a blog is to practice writing; it would be so helpful if someone familiar with the format and style could occasionally offer critique.

I'll look around for such a group. If I don't find one, I'll make one on ning. See I know how it gets done.

dug up from february...

2009-06-03T22:33:00.000-07:00

I know this is old, but I was just reading Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger's comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (via Haaretz). He said he wouldn't care if the Times stopped printing in five years. Of course, if the Times stopped printing, everyone else would probably follow suit...or take a huge risk by forging their own path. The thing is, if the Times successfully starts that trend, they'll also have enough impact on the industry to reintroduce fees for content.

And those fees will have to come back eventually. They'll have to be low. Credit cards and electronic checks won't suffice by any means. Gift cards—or subscription cards, rather—might, as long as they are truly ubiquitous, dispensed from machines on street corners and sold in grocery stores. Otherwise, disadvantaged kids will NEVER get to read the paper. (Of course, you would hope for public-use computers and wireless by that time.)

I no longer believe that paying a private company for content is a bad idea, but I do think those companies have to be prepared to continue their service to the fullest. There cannot be a lapse in accessibility during the transition from print to new media. The nature of the content is too important for that to happen.

That said, companies are entitled to charge. It's all they can do to sustain themselves. But unless they have a ready-to-launch strategy for ensuring widespread access, it's the citizens who will suffer as a result.

mentally ill and stuck in immigration limbo

2009-05-30T10:38:00.001-07:00

This article, Illegal Immigrant is Mentally Ill and Stuck in Immigration Limbo, has been making its way around the Web for some time—blessedly, as this story wouldn't have been discovered were it not for a lucky mistake.

Several blogs have reposted the lead. (Angry Asian Man and Racialicious.com's Thea Lim wrote persuasively on the subject.) The article is by Nina Bernstein:

Twice the immigration judge asked the woman’s name. Twice she gave it: Xiu Ping Jiang. But he chided her, a Chinese New Yorker, for answering his question before the court interpreter had translated it into Mandarin.

“Ma’am, we’re going to do this one more time, and then I’m going to treat you as though you were not here,” the immigration judge, Rex J. Ford, warned the woman last year at her first hearing in Pompano Beach, Fla. He threatened to issue an order of deportation that would say she had failed to show up.
She was a waitress with no criminal record, no lawyer and a history of attempted suicide. Her reply to the judge’s threat, captured by the court transcript, was in imperfect English. “Sir, I not — cannot go home,” she said, referring to China, which her family says she fled in 1995 after being forcibly sterilized at 20. “If I die, I die America.”
The judge moved on. “The respondent, after proper notice, has failed to appear,” he said for the record. And as she declared, “I’m going to die now,” he entered an order deporting her to China, and sent her back to the Glades County immigration jail.

No matter what your alignment in the immigration debate, you must by now realize that the courts are tragically botching these cases.

Worth another look

2009-05-28T23:29:00.000-07:00

I wanted to draw special attention to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual report, which I'm still going through. I was struck by this, from the overview:

The public retained a deep skepticism about what they see, hear and read in the media. No major news outlet – broadcast or cable, print or online – stood out as particularly credible. There was no indication that Americans altered their fundamental judgment that the news media are politically biased, that stories are often inaccurate and that journalists do not care about the people they report on.

And, perhaps paradoxically, a public that said it relies to a large and growing extent on the Internet for news gave it particularly low marks for credibility.

I would ordinarily assault you with more questions at this point, but I think this speaks for itself.

One view, no oversight

2009-05-28T22:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know what blogging is for.

I can see why it appeals to people. It also scares me. Why would anyone subject themselves to a reporter's scrutiny when there's this quick and easy way to get your side—and your side only—into the public domain?

We all know the received-received-wisdom: fact checking begets trust begets legitimacy. It's been proven. But just by talking to people outside this field, I've found that there's a distrust—probably a healthy one—of news organizations, precisely because they are private, for-profit companies. This, along with the recent dip in Internet advertising, might be what's put print in a state. My old roommate, for instance, said that it seemed to him all newspapers were trying to sell a product, and that was all.

After congratulations, crime

2009-05-27T23:31:00.000-07:00

I was reading Maggie's post about these campus thefts, thinking, that must SUCK. Seriously, people? At graduation? But that's what makes me think it's the same group responsible for the car break-ins last fall. No Mount Holyoke student is that despicable.

I checked the daily log and, sure enough, found the incidents in question. But I also found these:

On May 22 at 2:43pm an employee reported that during a verbal altercation with another employee that the other employee threatened to kill him and told him to 'go back to his country.' The employee had already discussed the issue with Human Resources (Incident #0901-321-OF). Investigation is continuing.

Troubling for obvious reasons. I don't think I've met any homicidal staff, but apparently they are out there.

On May 16 at 11:33am officers received a report of a suspicious male walking through Mead Hall. When asked why he was in the building, he claimed that he had been told he could go through items that were discarded by students. He was trespassed from campus (Incident #0901-316-OF). Case Closed.

The second one is just sort of thought-provoking. I'm sure the guy was referring to freebinning. Can you imagine if locals came in and "participated" in the tradition, albeit in a rather one-sided way? I never thought of freebinning as something sacred and shared, but it is; it's us, giving to each other, a kind of anonymous bonding. No one should be allowed to take that away (literally). (Thanks, Pubsafe!)

Victims of the economic crisis

2009-05-27T02:00:00.000-07:00

A look at the Dow might give you a rough idea of how our country is faring economically. But the worst effects of the global economic crisis are being faced by the world's poor—especially children.

Last Sunday, Nicholas Kristof's column addressed the desperate situation of families in West Africa struggling to keep their children alive. Most of these children are suffering from starvation due to malnutrition. Rising food prices and loss of income have taken an enormous toll on their diet.

According to the World Health Organization website, iodine, vitamin A and iron are the "most important [micronutrients] in global health terms; their lack represents a major threat to the health and development of populations the world over, particularly children and pregnant women in low-income countries." Although these nutrients are only required in small amounts, children need them in order to grow.

The Helen Keller International website states that malnutrition is implicated in over five million child deaths per year. Seemingly healthy children from affected regions are also very likely to have micronutrient deficiency.

A 2004 report by UNICEF observed that methods such as food fortification, public education and disease control had been effective in restoring essential vitamins and minerals to severely undernourished children. By that time, developing countries were managing to supply at least two thirds of their children with vitamin A supplements, saving more than 300,000 young lives per year and preventing blindness in "hundreds of thousands" of children.

Kristof points out that the issue of malnutrition is often overlooked by the mainstream media. Doctors, public health workers and NGOs like HKI are doing amazing work—but much more can and should be done, as Peter Singer would argue. Extreme poverty in the twenty-first century does not make sense.

Bly reads Rumi

2009-05-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

Praising Manners
Translated by Robert Bly for The Rumi Reader

We should ask God
to help us toward manners. Inner gifts
do not find their way
to creatures without just respect.

If a man or woman flails about, he not only
smashes his house,
he burns the world down.

Your depression is connected to your insolence
and refusal to praise. Whoever feels himself walking
on the path, and refuses to praise—that man or woman
steals from others every day—is a shoplifter!

The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself.
Angels only began shining when they achieved discipline.
The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes.
The moment the foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.

Happy Commencement

2009-05-25T02:47:00.000-07:00

Source: flickr.com/photos/mhc

Yesterday I woke up at 7:30 am to watch the Class of 2009 graduate via live webcast. The view from my macbook was limited and fuzzy, but with the help of the orchestra and my excitable imagination, I was able to get very worked up.

I don't know what it's like to graduate from a school you love. High school was interesting—I was glad I went, but it wasn't fun enough to miss—and middle school was so horrendous that I skipped the ceremony. When I started college, I think my worst fear was that it wouldn't be worth the drudgery it took to get there; that I'd only find more boredom and the daily exhaustion of dealing with people who view empathy as a moral disorder.

As I watched the parade of funny hats roll down the steps of the Gettell Ampitheater, I wondered what kind of wisdom I might say I've earned at MHC thus far. I thought about that secret fear...and how I didn't even notice when it went away.

So, seniors, the only (possibly preemptive) advice I, a lowly rising junior, have to offer you, is this: Seek inspiration. Resist boredom. As long as you keep challenging the hell out of yourself, none of this ever has to stop.