Clinton Defaults to Conflict: This is Washington, not Hollywood

"One of the things that makes Mrs Clinton so psychologically fascinating is her tendency to portray everthing in terms of conflict and confrontation. And one of the characteristics that makes her so interesting politically is that she is a much better candidate when things are going badly than when they are going well." From BBC News.

This is precisely why I think you Americans should not vote for Clinton. When she says in an interview that she would completely destroy Iran if they attacked Israel, her rhetoric is getting dangerous. It is highly unwise politics to threaten another nation in order to win votes in your own.

The world does not need another US President who defaults to conflict. It's fine in Hollywood: the victim finds their metal and fights back. It's just not good enough if the White House is going to be a force for good.

"America deserves a President who doesn't quit." Perhaps Hillary, but it also needs one who knows when stopping fighting is for the greater good.

Go vote Obama.

When Protestors Need a History Lesson

 

Durr.... HT RT Long.

Jaime Lerner ¦ Stealth and the City ¦ The City is Not the Self

Thanks to Helen of Urban Practitioners for sending me this article in The Guardian a couple of weeks back about Jaime Lerner and his radical environmental policies that have transformed the Brazilian city of Curitiba.

I say environmental in the truest sense: he is an architect by trade, and is concerned with the built environment, as well as carbon footprints.

What is particularly interesting was the necessity of stealth and speed: with political turmoil and dictatorial governance, he was never quite sure how long he had before his authority as mayor was swept away, nor how long it would be before someone tied his ideas up in red tape. Hence:

"We had to do things quickly because next week we might not be here anymore [because of the dictatorship].' And you have to be quick to avoid your own bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything. We built the opera house in two months, the botanical gardens in three months, Niemeyer's museum in five months. We transformed the city's main street into a pedestrian area in 72 hours. It wasn't that we were chasing after records - it was necessity."

There's something of the trickster about him, and as London comes to its own mayoral elections, it's going to be interesting who people plump for. One wonders if Lerner would have won the popular vote; in the case of Ken Livingstone, many of his policies for London - like the congestion charge - have been wildly unpopular, and yet have been very successful and vital to the city's environmental awareness.

Einstein once said 'the environment is everything that isn't me', and we might re-phrase that as 'the city is not about the self.' It's worth holding this in mind whenever we vote. Are we voting for our own pockets, or for the common - and more difficult - good?

Slow Media ¦ One Day Poem

Beautiful piece flagged here. The lines of a poem appear and disappear on the floor of a pavillion as the sun moves, shining through precisely arranged perforations. The artist, Jiyeon Song, is concerned that we are rushing too quickly through our finite life, and missing so much by doing so.

No, This is Not a Joke | Yes, This is a Post About Bestiality

Or, perhaps more accurately, a post about liberty. An article I read over the weekend was arguing that the Church has let people down by shying away from theologies of sex. So I thought I'd dip my toe in...

Good to hear Peter Tatchell on the radio this morning, talking about the protests over the Olympic Torch in London yesterday, and the extraordinary story of his citizen's arrests on Robert Mugabe. I've heard him in person twice; I expect it's more to do with my journey than his, but Peter is someone I have increasingly warmed to over the years. At Greenbelt his life of extreme simplicity and strong vision came across very well. His attempts to force the church into facing up to issues of sexuality are well known, and some might disagree with his methods, but he has equally done huge amounts of justice work in other areas, notably the citizen's arrests on Robert Mugabe (for which he was beaten unconscious by his guards, live on TV). He has also be the focus of huge amounts of hatred, with his life in constant threat.

However, I digress. The second time I saw him was at a debate in school. The question I asked him there was about the liberalisation of sexuality. Over the course of (western) history, things that were previously taboo have become acceptable, things that have previously been punishable by the law have now become protected by the law. So, I wondered, though it's not really my cup of tea, did he foresee a day in the future when bestiality would become acceptable?

[The all-time most read story on the BBC's site is that of a Sudanese man who was forced by his tribal elders to marry a goat after being found having sex with it. The goat has since died, for reasons unknown, so the man is a free agent again. Bestiality is clearly a minority interest, but something in the wider consciousness is fascinated by it.]

The heart of what I was trying to get at was whether there was some idyllic just place where what was right was protected, and what was wrong was punished. The boundaries keep getting pushed back, but how far do we keep pushing? Clearly pedophilia is wrong - though I've heard people on TV sickenly argue otherwise, suggesting that society has ignored the issue of pre-pubescent sexuality - because the rights of the child are being abused. But there are other grey areas. If you're not a vegetarian, and aren't so concerned for an animal's rights, why exactly is bestiality wrong? Is it about disease control? And what about incest? An Australian couple describing themselves as 'normal intellectuals' made a plea on TV this week for understanding of their incestuous relationship.

What about other sexual pursuits? The head of FIA, Max Mosely, is under huge pressure to resign after an exposé of an orgy he'd organized and paid for. Have people been in uproar about the orgy, or about the fact he spoke German to the prostitutes, and there were therefore possible Nazii overtones? Was anyone there against their will? Good question. Did the prostitutes involved really want to be there?

We can get high and mighty about this, but, if we are honest, none of us are free of guilt when it comes to issues of sex and oppression, and society's twin defaults of romantic fantasy and nudge-nudge humour are clear markers of this.

So, if there are absolutes - and I was cheerily mocked for suggesting one in the area of biology last week - where do they now lie? In the same place that Christianity has always placed them? And if these absolutes are simply unworkable in the world we find ourselves, what should our response be?

Technorati: Bestiality | Liberal | Mosely | Peter Tatchell | Sex

Waterlogged | Foff

It's been a difficult few weeks:

'What are you reading?'

'A book about open-water swimming.'

'Errr....'

Actually a far more subtle and interesting book than one might think, Waterlog is a homage to John Cheever's classic short story 'The Swimmer', in which the hero decides to swim the 8 miles home from a party using his neighbours' swimming pools. I blogged about Roger Deakin's other book, Wildwood, some time ago, and this is equally good.

The swimming, like the trees in Wildwood, is just a vehicle for meditations on British life, and on the relationship we have with water. Deakin parallels swimming pools with lawns: both are sanitised versions of nature, and neither will fully satisfy. Far better to wander the woods, or swim in rivers, natural pools or the sea.

It was also a lovely surprise to read a chapter about Jaywick, where Deakin spent many childhood holidays, and to hear him describe my Great Grandfather, who bought the land and developed the resort:

Like a lot of makeshift landscapes, Jaywick grew up as plotlands, sold off in the 1930s by a developer from Dulwich, F.C 'Foff' Stedman, with ambitious plans for the place as a holiday resort. In 1928, Stedman paid £7,500 for the reclaimed marshland, dunes and dykes, but Clacton Town Council refused him planning permission for houses because they were unhappy about the sewerage arrangements on such low-lying land. Undeterred, Stedman got permission instead for 'Beach Chalets' and 'Bathing Houses'. By 1929, he was offering beach chalets in the London papers for £20 to £100, and plots with land for car-parking or a garden for anything from £25 to £200. The chalets caught on with East Enders and by 1931 there were 200 of them at Jaywick.

Strangely, my wife and I almost bought a house in what would have been the garden of the house he had be born in in Dulwich, South East London. His wife, my Great Grandmother, lived next door. Her parents thought him unsuitable; too much of a wheeler-dealer. Troubles with dirt, reclaiming land, I love his spirit. We live just up the hill from, and I often think of him.

The last of the family's holdings in Jaywick were sold last year. I feel I want to go back and swim there again, and spend more time in open water.

Technorati: Cheever | Deakin | Dulwich | Foff | Jaywick | Swimming | Stedman | Waterlog

Stem Sell Research

Not content with starting a whole new business model for selling music, Radiohead have also now worked to subvert the remix business by making the stems of one of their tracks, Naked, available here.

Nice touch. Release the DNA, see what evolves.

See what people have grown, and vote, here.

Technorati: Naked

Scripters and Builders on Second Life

Last week, I was close to an equivalent of a panic attack. The deadline was approaching fast, and we still don't have a structure: what am I going to do?

The first thing I did was talk to Arturo and Dennis about the situation, and they talked to me about the fact that there are builders and scripters all over Second Life looking seeking some tasks to fulfill—some of them do it out of joy and others think of it as a job and as a source of financial gains.

Well I looked round, and it was hard locating people at first. Then I realized the best way to search for builders is searching through the classified ads. I contacted about 10 people last week, and I finally contracted with a lady who owns a building company and a guy who like scripting.

The most difficult part of this process is that it is time consuming. It took a lot of time to first find these people, try to explain to them what exactly our group is looking for and finally negotiate a price. There was also the issue of trust. You don't really know these people, and you don't know their level of skill, so you have try to figure it out through your conversations with them. I hired a person who said he was capable of doing our building—which is a really complicated building—but I soon found out that he doesn't have the right skills to fulfill this job. I asked the person if he can do the scripting and I found an experienced builder who is currently doing a beautiful job creating our structure—you can teleport to our space using the blue teleport right across the Fine Arts building.

All I want to say is that if any of you are having trouble with scripting and building, you can find people who can do the job for you before the deadline. Just be patient, careful and have your Lindens ready.

Good luck all, and I hope you guys check our building and give us your opinions on it.

The Last Lecture: A Must See

I don't know if you've already seen the Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch, or took the cue from our speaker last week, but it is a must see! One thing that I took from it was the idea of a head fake.

Many students, including myself, have referred to school as boring. What Randy has termed a 'head fake' has the potential to erase boring from someones vocabulary when talking about education. This puts the student in an environment that (s)he enjoys and teaches him/her something they would normally not enjoy learning by tricking them. 'One' of examples Randy gives is about the Alice program he's working on. In the program the user thinks (s)he making a movies and video games, when they are actually learning computer programming. I think this is something that is greatly lacking in the educational institutions I have attended, especially the higher I've gone. I remember having to do pages of math homework in middle and high school AND hating it. I remember playing a game in my elementary days that emphasized math skills on a computer AND loving it.

The student doesn't even need to be tricked into doing something, it only needs to be fun to increase the chance the student might actually take something from a lesson.

This is only ONE of the many things that I took from and enjoyed about Randy's speech. I highly recommend watching it, just give the title of this post a click, sit back, relax, and watch it.

Things To Consider When House Hunting

When it comes time to buy a home there are some important factors to consider to ensure you make the right decision. You may want to buy a home in a particular neighborhood, or maybe you are looking for a large back yard. House hunting can be exciting, it can also be stressful and overwhelming. Use the tips below to help lead you in the right direction so make your experience a positive one and in the end find that house of your dreams!

• Create a list. Think about what you and your family really need and want in your home. Focus in on the features you must have, would like to have, definitely don't want and would prefer not to have. Your goal is to find the right home for your family without falling in love with one that doesn't suit your needs. A good idea to get started is to think about what you like and dislike about your current home.
• Location, location, location. You've probably heard this old real estate cliché several times, but the point still bears repeating. Location is crucial. How far are you really willing to commute to your place of employment? How close are the local schools, shopping centers, and other amentiites. Is the potential home next to a busy road or a commercial property? Keep in mind even a picture-perfect dream home can be a mistake if it's in an undesirable location, and a poor-location home can be a particularly bad choice if you anticipate reselling the home within a few years.
•Prepare by doing your homework. The internet is a great source of information about recent home sales prices, market trends, homes on the market, neighborhood statistics and the home-buying process. Go surfing. Get educated and learn all you can to help you make the right decision.
•Affordability. Before you begin your search you shoud get pre-approved, so you know how much money you can borrow you'll know the price range you can afford. In addition, it can save you a lot of heartaches from falling in love in something way beyond your budget. Once you know your pre-approval loan, double check it by considering your present circumstances, lifestyle and spending habits. Once your confident with how much you can afford to buy, concentrate on the properties within your budget. Don't be tempted to look at more expensive properties. and buying more than what you can afford.
•Be prepared to make an offer. House-hunting can be especially frustrating if you think you're not really emotionally or financially ready to buy a home. If you're not ready, don't put yourself through that experience. If you are ready, go through a blank purchase contract ahead of time so you'll know what decisions you'll face when you make an offer.

Brian Leiter Understands Academic Freedom

And here he demonstrates that Paul Campos does not.

One point that Leiter makes is particularly worth repeating:

There is lots of speculation that maybe what Yoo did (writing the torture memos) constitutes a crime or legal malpractice. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't: it is unclear based on the available facts (though, on both counts, the available facts strongly suggest a negative answer, especially as to malpractice). It is not for the University of California at Berkeley to investigate crimes or investigate legal malpractice of its faculty, based on speculations that are, quite clearly in most cases, driven by those who find Yoo's views morally odious. Universities have no competence to carry out such investigations . . . and the mere prospect of such investigations would chill academic work on controversial matters almost totally.

If an institution actually charged with investigating crimes or legal malpractice--e.g., a prosecutor, a court, a congressional committee, a bar disciplinary committee--were to conduct a proper investigation and issue a finding of misconduct that would surely then be grounds for the university to open a disciplinary proceeding. But as things stand, there are no such grounds. . . . most of those chattering about "possible" crimes and malpractice soon make it clear that what they really want is for John Yoo to be punished for his ideas and for the fact that some government officials may have acted on those ideas. That's a standard that violates the First Amendment rights of state university faculty and betrays the moral ideal of academic freedom.

Buying Property: How to exchange US Dollars For Brazilian Reals

Hopefully, someone can help. About a week ago, I sent a fair amount of money to Brazil via a bank wire transfer to buy a property.

Let’s call it $100,000 just to make it easy. It turns out that you need all this documentation just to release the money into my wife’s bank account. After putting it all together, the Bank here in Brazil tells us that the buy rate for brazilian reals is 1.67.

So my $100,000 would buy 167,000 Reals.

Their sell rate is 1.79. Meaning I would need to pay 179,000 Reals to buy $100,000 US.

The spot rate on the exchange markets today is 1.739.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDBRL=X

with a bid of 1.739 and an ask of 1.740.

That means that the bank is charging 4% BEFORE fees to exchange the money.

I told them to send the money back to my US account.

There has to be a better way.

I’ve been Googling and calling different places for the last 2 hours. Forex.com said of the brazilian Reals "we don’t deal with exotic currencies like that". Exotic? It’s the 5th largest country on the planet!

All of the Currency exchange specialists seem to be based out of the UK (maybe it has something to do with the term?). I called HiFX and the guy on the phone says "I know we have it on our website, but we don’t deal with brazilian Reals."

WTF?!?

The idea of being raped for thousands of dollars just to exchange my money makes me sick to my stomach. It’s not that $5,000 or $10,000 one way or the other changes my quality of life, it’s just the principle of the matter. I worked hard to make this money and paying that much to exchange money is just wrong on a gut level.

I need a solution.

If you can find me a solution so I can exchange $100,000 or more US dollars for Brazilian reals in one transaction for something much closer to market rates (like around 1.73ish) and without a hefty commission, I’ll send you $100 via paypal.