The Breaking Time

The Age of Splinters: More and more countries...

Thousands celebrate South Sudan's independence in Juba. Photo by Roberto Schmidt, AFP

On Saturday, South Sudan, after a long struggle, became the world's 193rd nation. While the country has a challenging path ahead, it's certainly an improvement after years of struggle against an oppressive regime.

Their break with Sudan also marks the latest in a decades long trend: nations splintering instead of forming.

Parag Khanna, writing in Foreign Policy, hails the trend:

Because of this wave of self-determination culminating in sovereignty, there are today more autonomous political units in the world than at any time since the Middle Ages of a millennium ago. Within a few decades, we could easily have 300 states in the world. Moreover, we are gradually returning to the medieval world of thousands of multilayered communities ranging from the supranational European Union to the magnetic city-states of the Persian Gulf to the indigenous communities of the Inuit of Canada and Greenland.

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The coming partitions must be performed with a combination of scalpel and ax, soft and hard power. Above all, the world must recognize that these partitions are inevitable. Our reflex is to fear changes on the map out of concern for violence or having to learn the names of new countries. But in an age when any group can acquire the tools of violent resistance, the only alternative to self-determination is perpetual conflict.

Khanna mostly focuses on post-colonial states, admittedly a major part of the trend. In their haste to hack up the world, would-be overlords often drew boundaries with a complete disregard for local factors. So you get Iraq, Sudan, the Congo and plenty of others.

The medieval era ended with momentum moving in the opposite direction: nations encompassed broader identities, then took on colonies to become empires. For awhile, it looked like the whole world would end up under a handful of governments. The zenith — just after World War II — saw a rudimentary international structure in place.

Ironically, even the empires' opponents got in on the act. Communism sought to be the international replacement for nation-states, superseding their own identities into a grander ideology.

Even after it was clear that the UN would never govern the world, the competing power blocs still seemed a trend towards centralization, especially as the European Union started to knit a continent together.

But post-colonial states kept splitting up and the USSR acted like an old-school empire before promptly collapsing like one. It's not confined to the developing world either: the EU doesn't look so hot, nor does Italy.

Textbook racket attacks fair use

If you quote it, we'll shoot you

A good column by Quinn Norton highlights a fresh outrage:

In their ongoing quest to punch every puppy they can find, rights holders have turned to suing those most rapacious of pirates, professors. Academic publishers are asking a judge in Georgia for an injunction against Georgia State University for a liberal fair-use policy. What these publishers are objecting to is unapproved and unpaid-for book and article excerpts in class materials—essentially quoting and anthologizing. They want everything that can be paid for to be paid for. Specifically, professors couldn't use more than 10 percent or 1,000 words of an in-print book, whichever is less. That's about two pages. And it's campus wide—if I use two pages of Robert Jackall's Moral Mazes in my class, no student or teacher can use a third page without paying or getting sued by the publisher of Moral Mazes.

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But that's not what fair use is about. It's a limit to copyright baked into the law. In the act itself, it cites a teacher making copies of classroom materials as a fair use. It's part of the copyright bargain; we grant these rights in exchange for material that improves our society as a whole, not so a group of publishers can get a piece of that mad college student money.

Absurd doesn't even begin to cover it.

Look, it's not like college textbook publishers don't have an extortion racket going on already. Hell, there's even recent legislation trying belatedly to curb the worse excesses.

I was somewhat fortunate: ASU was one of the few universities with a book rental system. While helpful, that didn't stop professors from assigning lots and lots of additional books, preferably expensive new editions. Barely having money for food, buying these was out of the question. I managed to pass my classes by borrowing, copying pages, taking copious notes, having a good memory and spending A LOT of time in the library. I was far from the only student in this situation, and I'll never forget the day when, after complaining about the price, a professor told a number of us to "just ask your parents for more money." Fewer things crystallized more clearly the assumption that education is the domain of the wealthy. This is one more move to worsening that divide.

Turns out xkcd was accurately predicting a terrifying dystopia

There's also a risk here I think rights holders still don't grasp. Ideally, when crafting a law, you want something that satisfies both competing interests: publishers get money, the public gets information. The point of this is while neither party gets completely what they want, they get enough that most people obey the law most of the time.

The increasing tilt towards rights holders is reaching such a ludicrous extreme that eventually people just cease obeying the law, consequences be damned. Determined students and professors will just make the copies anyway. What, are the publishers going to find all of them, much less sue?

The result is the equivalent of legal civil war: the occasional brutally sued defendant, but far more people who simply ignore the law. That this sort of scorched earth tactic never works never seems to stop companies from using it.

When etiquette gets harsh: "she texted. We kicked her out."

Also hilarious.

I've talked about phone breaks on here before, as a way culture is accommodating the intrusion of new social devices while still preserving the basic taboos of etiquette.

While there's wiggle room in personal social situations, essential to that incorporation is the idea that some areas, theaters in particular, remain entirely off-limits to cell usage. 

Apparently, the Alamo Drafthouse agrees. Not only did they expel a patron for repeatedly texting during a movie, they proceeded to put up her ranting voicemail in front of all their R-rated shows as a head-on-the-gate style reminder to the rest of their patrons.

Politeness, like any more, relies on breach: even if some people don't like it, social consequence compels them to abide by it most of the time. It's interesting to see the new media variety of public ridicule — boasting publicly about throwing the patron out, and spreading it via YouTube — meet the enforcement of old-school etiquette. This kind of "this far, and no further" act is just as much a part of incorporating technology into the social landscape as phone breaks.

Plans Change: Don't fuck Plan B

Without a Plan B, you end up with this

Come now, you know better than this.

Don't fuck Plan B. 

I see where you're coming from. You have some driving passion you want to see done. You are determined to sweep obstacles out of the way. No doubt you've heard any number of successful people talk about how all kinds of shit fell into place because they pursued their dreams and never once let the thought of failure enter their mind. It's a lot easier to talk this way after one has a large bank account, but that's another story.

You want to burn the ships on the beaches, because there ain't no going back.

Because you're young, and might be in love more with the idea of Plan A than its reality. Hell, Plan B turns out to be a better Plan A many, many times.

Or maybe because you're older, with just enough success to think your ideas are foolproof, and that's stupid.

Have a Plan B.

Because no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Or an obstacle. The world gives you plenty of both.

Because the love of your life may turn out to be a terrible person.

Because determination is formidable, not invincible.

Because one day you might be poor, or are right now. Your stomach, your bill collectors and your landlord don't give two shits how brilliant Plan A is.

Because if you don't have a Plan B, the world is happy to write one for you, and you won't like it.

Because one day you might have some power, and our world is full of terrible problems created by people who assumed their first plan would work out. People who assumed that markets would always rise or that they'd be greeted as liberators, and there are a lot of others out there who really, really wish they'd had a Plan B.

Don't be one of those assholes.

So here's to the stockpile, the reserve, the savings account, the full pantry, the contingency plan. Here's to the second career. Here's to hidden talents and new skills. Here's to rolling with the punches, learning that you're not half as smart as you thought you were, and coming back better next time.

Here's to your editor calling you out on your bullshit. Here's to tempering your dreams in reality, the same way metal is transformed in fire.

Here's to Plan B.

Hey, we live in a world where "look before you leap" and "those who hesitate are lost" are both true. No one ever said it would be easy.

Plans change.

The best to you, and good hunting.

(Thanks to Madeline Ashby for suggesting the title of this post.)

Want to help spur a dark age? Close a library

My hometown library, thankfully not shuttered yet.

I woke up this morning to this heartbreaking post by Charles Simic:

All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations. Detroit, I read a few days ago, may close all of its branches and Denver half of its own: decisions that will undoubtedly put hundreds of its employees out of work. When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire. People everywhere are unhappy about these closings, and so are mayors making the hard decisions. But with roads and streets left in disrepair, teachers, policemen and firemen being laid off, and politicians in both parties pledging never to raise taxes, no matter what happens to our quality of life, the outlook is bleak.

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I don’t know of anything more disheartening than the sight of a shut down library. No matter how modest its building or its holdings, in many parts of this country a municipal library is often the only place where books in large number on every imaginable subject can be found, where both grownups and children are welcome to sit and read in peace, free of whatever distractions and aggravations await them outside.

I've written here before about the decay of public infrastructure for some similar reasons, though it focused on nuts and bolts like roads and street lamps. Libraries are just as vital a piece of infrastructure.

This one hits home for me. The main family heirloom, passed down by my great-grandfather, is a set of 1912 Harvard classics. My mother, a schoolteacher, found ways to make sure that what ever else went on in our lives, whatever lack of money we were struggling with, there were always books around. Frequently, that was possible because of a public library.

For the short-sighted, it's an easy target. Books, after all, will still exist and, besides, goes the dismissal, there's the internet.

Yeah, no shit. Undoubtedly even the occasional Victorian street urchin had some access to books and outside knowledge, but that misses the damn point.

Libraries' greatest service isn't for the well-off, who can get education and information relatively easily in any era. Instead, its crowning achievement is opening up knowledge to those large parts of society — the unfashionable neighborhoods, the rural swaths — that the tastemakers and futurists usually ignore.

Ignored doesn't mean nonexistent, of course, and for those populations, libraries are a major resource. One, that unlike a lot of other services, doesn't lecture. We're open, read what you want. 

It is the best kind of egalitarianism: available to everyone, relatively cheap, and rewarding initiative. Libraries don't require the upfront cash or monthly bills that internet access does, and are open to non-tech savvy parts of the population. Often, they include local collections or obscure texts that the internet has, for the large part, ignored. Hell, they even open access to that same new media to those who can't afford it.

As if all that wasn't enough, libraries complement the education systems in place, because even if those are magically reformed, tomorrow, there's inevitably things their curriculums will leave out.

Even at points in my childhood when public education was lacking, access to a library took up some of the slack. Thanks to them, I first learned about dueling political theories, Alexander the Great, Chinese history and evolution, to name just a few.

If you think I'm drawing too much from my personal past, consider that there are millions out there who owe the same debt.

The presence of a library, even in the smallest community, is a reminder that the world is more than what's right in front of you, and that ideas aren't just the province of the rich.

History, from one view, can mark catastrophes by the destruction of libraries. For the power-hungry and zealous, the rooms full of books were a threat, or expendable.

Today, we don't need invaders. Just a smug belief in our own advancement, and a blind refusal to pay the bill.

Belling the cat

The mice in council, illustration by Milo Winter

There's an old fable, traditionally attributed to Aesop, though he probably never told it. It goes something like this:

Once upon a time all the Mice met together in Council, and discussed the best means of securing themselves against the attacks of the cat. After several suggestions had been debated, a Mouse of some standing and experience got up and said, "I think I have hit upon a plan which will ensure our safety in the future, provided you approve and carry it out. It is that we should fasten a bell round the neck of our enemy the cat, which will by its tinkling warn us of her approach."

This proposal was warmly applauded, and it had been already decided to adopt it, when an old Mouse got upon his feet and said, "I agree with you all that the plan before us is an admirable one: but may I ask who is going to bell the cat?"

That story came back to me yesterday afternoon, as I was driving back to Asheville after a lovely weekend far from civilization. NPR had a good segment on the country's debt ceiling problems. It's likely the ceiling will be raised after some sort of compromise (how bad a one remains to be seen), but the underlying problems have built up for some time.

There's plenty of blame to go around, mind, and narrow interests have way too much leverage over the political system.

But I think the narrative often pushed, of an innocent and just "people" held hostage to nefarious cliques, is lacking something, and the above segment illustrates why. Notice that the current unsustainable setup — massive spending on the military, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, along with an utter unwillingness to raise taxes — is extremely popular. The unpopular programs that people want to cut actually make up a minuscule part of spending.

Yes, most Americans, like most humans, deserve way better than what they receive. Conversely, I don't buy the bullshit narrative that the average voter bears equal responsibility for the worst actions of those in power. But the current set-up got that way in part because millions upon millions of people voted for its advocates. Repeatedly.

After all, a better-equipped military sounds good, right? And grandma really does deserve her check (plus, her demographic votes in massive numbers).

When it comes time to pay for all that, no one wants to foot the bill, or even part of the bill. Raising taxes isn't popular because few people say "I want more money to go to the government" especially when you don't particularly like the one you have.

Politicians like to be popular; it's a job requirement. Aforementioned interests prod too (what else would you expect them to do?) to protect their own pet causes.

All of which makes the current situation understandable — as most disasters are. It also points to the thornier side of the problems it highlights, because when you factor in the popular demands that led to the current fiasco, it's not just a problem of replacing an elite or throwing out some nefariously influential power-brokers.

This isn't limited to governmental finances, of course. All those new, smart devices guzzle electricity, fueling a thirst for coal (or oil, or nuclear) power. People waiting for their shiny martial arts implants won't bother to exercise. Voting for decades of "tough on crime" politicians has spurred a massive prison population. There is always a price, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

Obviously, breaks in the wilderness make me quite ranty.

But there's something here. If we want to avoid this kind of clusterfuck in the future, it might be time to start asking not just about the benefits of today's plans for tomorrow, but about their consequences, and if we're fully prepared to accept them. Someone always has to bell the damn cat.

Bin Laden's dead, and a long decade is over

The crowd in front of the White House after the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death

I was shaving in the dorm bathroom on September 11, 2001 when my roommate interrupted me with the news. He was a black metal kid with a twisted sense of humor, so at first I didn't believe him. But there was an shocked honesty to his face I'd never seen before.

And, there it was. By complete chance, 9/11 was my first day as a journalist. I had a preliminary assignment to interview the head of one of the library's special collections. Like a lot of people hit by news bigger than I could comprehend, I stumbled about doing what I'd planned, only to find the poor old man with his head buried in his hands, unable to speak. I came back another day.

Talking to my mother the next night, I ended a long conversation with the following: “I think a lot of people are going to die.”

That last comment was the closest I came to a glimpse of what would unfold over the next decade. In the coming years, friends went to protests, signed up for war and came back with nightmares. I don't think any of us will ever lose the old feeling of dread every time we see a crowd of people gathered around the news.

I got word of bin Laden's death over Twitter, while enjoying a night with an old friend, and our first reaction was shocked happiness. At my alma mater, students poured into the streets and rousted the chancellor out of bed to make a speech.

My generation spent its first decade of adulthood living in the fallout of bin Laden's actions. With his death, that time, in a very real sense, is over. Untangling the ensuing feelings, my own included, isn't easy, which is why this post has waited for almost three days.

More on what's behind the end of an era, below the cut.

Under a different law: Jail for sending a child to school

Okay, this is really ugly:

Connecticut authorities have filed theft charges against Tanya McDowell, a homeless woman, alleging that she used a false address to enroll her son in a higher-income school district, The Stamford Advocate reports. If she's convicted, McDowell may end up in jail for as many as 20 years and pay a $15,000 fine for the crime.

McDowell is a homeless single mother from Bridgeport who used to work in food services, is now at the center of one of the very few false address cases in the Norwalk, CT, school district that is being handled in criminal court--rather than between the parent and school. Authorities are accusing McDowell of enrolling her 5-year-old son in nearby Norwalk schools by using the address of a friend. (Her friend has also been evicted from public housing for letting McDowell use her address.)

One of the unspoken stories of the recession is that many working class people who were just scraping by have ended up homeless after they lose their jobs. Now, apparently, even an attempt to get their child into a good school when they have no permanent address is... a criminal activity that can get two decades in prison (while it's doubtful McDowell will get the full brunt, for comparison, the average sentence for rape is 5-11 years).

Not only that, but her friend, still hanging on to a place to live, gets evicted for trying to help her. When I first read this, I initially remembered English juries in early 1800s opting to convict someone who'd stolen a handkerchief of manslaughter, because the penalties were less. This is disgustingly disproportionate to the point of barbarism.

Another tidbit:

"I am surprised that this is the case [Norwalk officials] chose to make an example of," Norwalk attorney Michael Corsello told the Stamford-Advocate.

It's not surprising. McDowell is homeless, so she has no resources to fight this, and given the amount of people in similar spots, the school district wants to maintain its high-income nature and discourage more of this sort of entry in the bluntest way possible. Add to that the general public stigma attached to homelessness, and McDowell makes an easy target.

At the root of the word "privilege" isn't the academic wibbling it's often buried in, but a more simplistically brutal observation. Privilege means "private law." For McDowell or her friend, there is one law, harshly enforced; witness the possible sentence, the fine, and eviction for what is, at worst, a minor fraud.

But let's take a much wealthier family who lives just down the road, and also wants to get into Norwalk's school district. Like McDowell, the written rules don't allow this, but it's more likely they'll know a sympathetic administrator or school board member who will find some exemption. If they don't have such contacts, they are far more likely to have the time and resources to make an introduction convincing one of the above people that their child deserves special treatment.

Even if their attempts fail, it's likely the school will simply say "no, you can't come" and that will be the end of it. There will be no criminal investigation, and prison is out of the question. If, for some reason, this family's attempt backfires badly enough to reach the public eye, it lacks the visceral backlash appeal of "homeless sneaking into our schools!" Their attempt to get a better education for their child might even attract some sympathy.

They are far too expensive to make an example of. For all practical purposes, that family lives under a different law. Meanwhile, the poor will always be with you, and suffer what they cannot avoid.

Magnifying a subculture (or: why are there so many assholes on television?)

Christian Slater, playing the latest iteration of Hollywood executives' ongoing love letter to themselves

Matt Seitz has a piece in Salon that hits the iceberg tip of a much larger phenomenon. Ostensibly a review of the truly atrocious-looking new comedy Breaking In, Seitz instead turns goes in a more interesting direction entirely:

If you've ever asked yourself why so many TV shows and movies glorify people who strut around growling orders and insulting underlings and barking, "Think, people! Think!" and otherwise acting like insufferable jerks, you've never spent any time in Los Angeles. Hollywood is a dream factory run mostly by and for raging narcissists with power and money. Its mass-produced dreams are overseen by people who want to be constantly reassured that they're talented, sexy, charismatic warrior-poet visionaries, and that you can absorb such invaluable knowledge by being around them that the abuse they heap on you is totally worth it. That's why the preferred dramatic configuration of ensemble TV shows is the ragtag band of eccentric professionals (read as: creative types), led by a well-dressed, middle-aged boss who reflexively needles and insults people and throws temper tantrums and sometimes puts on an expensive jacket and sunglasses, hops in his expensive car or on his expensive motorcycle, and takes off for parts unknown without warning, forcing underlings to wonder where the hell he is and talk about him nonstop until he reappears unannounced and provides them with the final piece of whatever puzzle they were trying to solve in his absence. These shows exist to kiss the asses of people who approve shows.

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The autocratic mentor-leader with no time for pleasantries is a masturbation fantasy of super-rich producers, directors, studio executives and network suits. The archetype keeps showing up on-screen because it's an easy way to stroke the ego of a boss who's not very smart or self-aware. ("See, the FBI team is headed by this handsome, mysterious, brilliant guy in his 40s with this young, hot girlfriend ..." "I like it!") Roughly a third of CBS' prime-time lineup and a lot of Fox's has a Hollywood boss surrogate as its hero, and pretty much every other network and cable channel has its own versions scattered throughout the schedule.

Despite their relative clout, the executives Seitz skewers in this piece are a relatively small subculture, ensconced in a small part of the world. However, they do have control over some entrenched, widespread media platforms.

That's an important possession, and it's why TV the world over gets blasted with magnified versions of a relatively narrow subculture. This isn't even some intentional cultural push: these particular egos, naturally enough, just think reflections of themselves are awesome.

It's not like aging Hollywood narcissists are the only ones who do this, either. Last year, Conor Friedersdorf wrote an excellent series on the cultural Tyranny of New York, and observed the following:

every week in San Francisco when the Sunday New York Times arrives at the doorstep or is picked up at the Starbucks, its readers get international coverage, national news, and a first rate national magazine, accompanied by a bunch of cultural commentary, slices of life, and other miscellany filtered through the lens of NYC, magnifying its ethos and crowding out the local equivalent.

The history of alt culture, from one perspective, is based on exactly this phenomenon, often spread further by tying to and infecting parts of the mainstream. Those parts, in turn, find sifting through exotic cultural movements useful for their own reasons.

Now, with the power of traditional media diluted, and new options available for those without a producers' means, there are some interesting possibilities that weren't easily available before. Could a subculture magnify itself intentionally?

Food for thought.

A world of cupcakes and gang turf

A map of San Francisco's Mission District, combining the location of cupcake bakeries with the territory of the Norteño and Sureño gangs. Map by Danya Al-Saleh. See the full, glorious original

My, that's quite an arresting image, isn't it? Al-Saleh, a UC Berkeley undergrad, told Edible Geography that she made the image, in part, as a reminder to those dining in a hip neighborhood that a very different reality existed around them.

It's an innovative piece, and does what excellent maps do: give us a greater awareness of the world. In this case, Al-Saleh illuminates the cultures and economies existing right on top of each other. Cupcakes and Sureños are only a shard, any metropolis has similar layers upon layers. The decision to add the boundary of the gang injunction is the icing on the cupcake; showing a state attempt to deal with a borderless entity.

Remember this when someone tells you, blithely, that "everybody knows." I hear this a lot in Asheville, but we've got no monopoly on the attitude. "Everybody knows that part of town is crap."

Do they now? No, what the speaker actually means is "me and my friends believe." The slippery thing about knowledge is that always remains unknown to someone.

And speaking of puncturing things "everyone knows," feast your eyes on the 12 States of America.

Fuck you, Red State/Blue State. Map by Column Five Media

Yes, back in the dirty days of the 2000s, everybody knew that the country was divided into big blocs of Red states and Blue states, each representing two diametrically opposed cultures. It was convenient, giving the right-wing a chance to feel powerful and Yankees another paper-thin excuse to feel superior.

Along comes this new map, befitting a fractured era concerned with a shaky economy. The 12 "States" measured by the differing effects of income inequality over the past 30 years, are swaths and enclaves, things like "tractor country," "minority central" and "service worker centers." While obscuring plenty, it's a hell of a lot more accurate (and interesting), than its predecessor. We live in a world where cupcakes and gang territory coexist, like it or not.