the guy by the door …

The upside of growing old at Harvard is that you have young people to remind you of all the important things going on in the world. [The downside is the constant reminder that i’m not the guy i used to be.] Anyway, thanks to some Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance [BGLTSA] folks tabling outside the Harvard Science Center, i am now aware that today October 11 is National Coming Out Day. i’m thinking that the ‘Supporters’ thing means that even if you are not BGL or T, but just a boring old het, you can still wear the rainbow ribbon. You could view it as a King Christian X of Denmark thing. Or maybe you want to avoid the regrets of Pastor Martin Niemöller. Just a thought.

I agreed with their assertion last year. The world is still here, but in considerably worse shape I’m giving them a plus mark in truth in advertising. It’s a little earlier this year. It may well be bigger this year. They have been advertising on Air America Radio with a click through to the WCW national site. The Boston group has a blog. Today Oct. 5 starting at noon at the Bandstand on Boston Common. I will stop by at noon, but briefly. I’m going to respond to an invitation forwarded to me by the Harvard Cambridge Peace Walk.

Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Special Seminar

The Imperative and Possibilities of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: Hibakusha and Japanese Movement Perspectives

Hiroshi Takakusaki, General Secretary of Gensuikyo (Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs)

Shoji Sawada, Professor of Physics (emeritus), Nagoya University, and a Hibakusha (a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing)

(Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead Center’s Program on U.S.-Japan Relations)

*

This event is being carried out in cooperation with the Cambridge office of the American Friends Service Committee and Joseph Gerson.

This is important because some people actually don’t know that seeking hegemony is a bad thing and why. One of the justifications for the invasion of Iraq was nuclear weapons. It was a policy of Non-Proliferation through Preemptive War. According to Scott Ritter the U.S. Government has been flying U2’s over Iran for at least two years. This is an act of war. Scott was right about the Iraqi nukes. So mostly likely, we are secretly already at war with Iran. The question is, will that war go “hot” or nuclear. Scott was wrong about the bombing starting June a year ago, but seeing the future is an imprecise science. The drumbeat from the administration has gotten louder. And with the manpower problems of the military, if the war does go “hot”, the “nuclear option” is likely. Then there is North Korea. The notion of a series of small nuclear wars to prevent proliferation is not the classical picture of THE UNTHINKABLE, but that’s kind of the point. The administration seems to be dedicated to making THE UNTHINKABLE thinkable. I don’t buy the premise.

So I’ll go briefly to WCW06, then to the Knafel, then get with Marion Lamm, then I’ll go to my little desk by the door. Maybe latter I’ll reconnect with WCW, they say they’ll be there for 24 hours, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to do it.

…and apparently someone else.

I found this posted on G level of Littauer [the old one.] Nicely done. Art and economics. Pop quiz. Identify the pictures. I know the second offhand, but I will have to Google the first. Hmm, I think I’ve got it, but I’ll Google to be sure.

I did know the answer to the first picture. I don’t see it offered in the near future at the Harvard Film Archive*, but I’m sure it’s available on DVD.

On looking at the second picture again, I realize that I don’t have any special knowledge about it. It is, obviously high tech. I initially assumed from the clean suit that it was semiconductor microchip manufacture, but mybe not. The technician in clean suit is looking at one of a row of monitors. I don’t know what is in h(er|is) hand. => I don’t know if the technician is a man or a woman. In the early days of integrated circuit manufacture, the workers who sat for hours at microscopes microsoldering the the chips to package leads where overwhelmingly women. I was in high school then. In college, the doctor from Planned Parenthood who came to give us a birds, bees, and condom talk***, added that the technicians who handled the eggs in vaccine manufacture were overwhelmingly women. But it’s different now?

——–
*You might like, En El Hoyo** offered on Saturday October 21 as part of the Boston Latino International Film Festival. Mass College of Art and the Latino Arts Center are cosponsors. I don’t know the full meaning of that.
**according to Google translate it means “In the Hole” although it sounds like the film happens above the main roadway.
***I think the Dean of Women at the time was the fossil that called the freshman women together and told them not to wear patent leather shoes. She retired early in my college career. She was worried about reflections. I’m not making this up. She had been there for a Sagan of years and it was a small Methodist school. She was worried about reflections.

You’ll have to believe me for now, that there are quite a few Black Alumni here. There were two very photogenic women at the reception table. I told them what I was up to, but they were still nervous. There was a panel, “State of Blacks at Harvard: Leveraging Our Resources for the Community at Large.” I recognized two names Soledad O’Brien ’88 from the TV and Chuck Turner ’62, Boston City Councillor for the neighboring community of Roxbury. If you wonder how I know so many black politicians, it’s because I live in Dorchester. The politicians who speak up for me, just happen to be black [and Latin(a|o)]. Well except for Sam Yoon.

A member of the Wabaseemoong Independent Nation. Like many stories of the clash between industrial culture and Native American cultures, it is not a pretty picture. Where’s the forest? Going fast – clearcutting.

Anne McDonald, originally from Canada, currently does research and teaching on the environment at Miyagi University in Osaki City, Japan [not Osaka as I said]. She is acquainted with the methyl mercury poisoning of the coastal village just south of Osaka for which the disease is now named – Minamata disease. When she discovered that the effects of Minamata disease still afflict the Ojibwa people in her native Canada [and her parents have a cabin nearby] she felt compelled to take on yet another project. She discovered that a fellow Canadienne had meticulously documented the affliction of the Ojibwa. And that Marion Lamm gave her documents to the Harvard College Library. Anne and her collaborator and publisher Hiroshi Isogai are here furiously pouring over 59 boxes of documents. I wonder whether her project and environmental study at Harvard would both benefit from some collaboration. They will be working mostly at Littauer Library in the North Yard through Tuesday.

*From the title of their book, “Ojibwa Voices Through the Forest: visual field notes of Canada’s Minamata experience.” Shimizukobundo

Princeton University computer scientists have posted a report Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine to the Center for Information Technology Policy website. They conclude that these machines are definitely vulnerable to cybertampering.

I heard this episode of a program segment called the Bioneers last Sunday on KEXP Seattle [via internet]. It is about commoditization of water in Mesopotamia and the rather frightening prospect that water might come under the control of a few multinational corporations. It will stay on their stream archive server for another week. The Bioneers is a segment of the program called Mind over Matters. The episode I heard aired Sunday Sept. 17 at 6:00 AM.

It sounded reasonably well researched. There was one point that seems to be in error. They claimed that Sharia, the Arabic word for the body of Islamic law, means “sharing water.” Wikipedia, says that it means, “the well trodden path.” My co-worker* agreed with the later.

The Bioneer segment was based on a report by the same name authored by Maude Barlow Chairperson of the Canadian International Forum on Globalization (IFG). The text is online at Third World Traveler.

*A woman who belongs to the Harvard Islamic Society told me that the Saudi family has backed down on excluding women from Mecca. I don’t doubt her veracity, but I have not yet found a another source. And I apologize for forgetting her name. I hope I get another chance.

Members of Service Employees Internation Union Local 615 distributing flyers for Friday’s support rally for Saintely Paul.

——

From the SEIU 615 flyer:

Saintely Paul has been working in the William James Hall for Facilities Maintenance Operations (FMO) for the past 6&1/2 years. He was fired at the end of June after he fainted at work. Havard refuses to rehire him despite medical documentation of his treatment . Upon firing, Saintely’s health insurance was taken away.

Also:

Contact Harvard University’s interim president Derek Bok by e-mail:

derek_bok {the normal at-sign goeth here*} harvard.edu

Or by phone: (617) 495-1502

Tell him that Harvard janitors deserve better treatment. Demand that Harvard reinstate Saintely Paul with back pay and cover the medical expenses he has incurred during this period.

Questions? Contact SEIU local 615 at 617-878-7403

This is not a request to cease services and deliveries. No dispute with any other employer.

*handing the President’s email address to spam-bots is counterproductive.

Carrying tubs of used course packs.	for the Habitat for Humanity book sale.

The deals are not a steal, but they are better than new and the proceeds go to a place. A few pennies may even end up in New Orleans. Course packs are expensive. They were once [if not still] printed by Union labor – members of what was once the Graphic Communication International Union. It is now the Graphic Communication Conference of the Teamsters
which is in turn part of the Change to Win Coalition. But if my most favoritist reactionary string theorist, Lumidek claims that course packs are expensive because of the Unions, he will be wrong! Most of the cost is licensing that intervention in the ‘free market’ that the right-wingers love so much – copyrights. | Richard Stallman appeared briefly at the Wikipedia conference at Harvard Law this summer. Given the significant differences between copyrights and patents, he asked whether the concept of intellectual property has any ontological basis. It is, he asserts, merely a tool to legitimize business practices that benefit the few at the expense of the many.

———
Today is the last day of the sale.

As you might expect, Harvard labor is also in the picture…

…with Jim from FMO helping out…	…while the folks from HUDS get ready for their day.

div align=”left” style=”text-align: center”

This came about because after entering centered text I wanted to return to left justified text. Here’s the thing. ‘align’ and ‘style=”text-align’ are both about text alignment. ‘align’ is an older version of html. ‘style’ is a newer Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) locution [my word of the day]. The top of the cascade is when ‘style’ information is provided as an attribute to a tag rather than separate sheet.So somebody used flavor one time and another the next and one does not undo the other. The result depends on precedence rules of locutions that should never happen. And of course, I can’t figure out how to get the html editor to display the tag brackets. So much for automatic generation of html.

Students of the College of Public and Community Service of UMass Boston on their way to the protest at the UMass President’s Office in downtown Boston.

*The Harbor Campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston is in the area in which community groups sought to secede from Boston and rename their community Mandela. This fact, correctly mentioned by a Wikipedia pilot fish site, no longer appears in Wikipedia.

On my way to campus today, I passed the campaign headquarters of incumbant State Representative Marie St. Fleur. She was shoulder to shoulder with the troops. I like that in a politician.

The guy who lives near the Strand is going to vote for her in the primary today. Their will be a write-in vote [for something] for Philip R. Fenstermacher in Ward 13 Precinct 6. The official role had better show it! Marie is also a blogger.

Harvard members of Habitat for Humanity sell used course packs in front of the Tanner Fountain. The Science Center appears on the right and Memortial Hall on the left.

Recycling is a virtue in and of itself, but Habitat for Humantity @ Harvard adds a second level by selling used and useful items and applying the proceeds to the construction of low-income housing. The gentleman on the right above went to New Orleans last summer.

Shown for free this summer by Brookline Peace Works as part of the International Day of Action to Shut Down Guantanamo, it is being shown tonight at 7:00 PM by the Harvard Film Archive. It is part of their series Where We Are: The War in Iraq on Film. There will be a second showing Tuesday evening. Tomorrow night, Saturday Sept 16, HFA is showing two more in the series Iraq in Fragments at 7:00 PM and Occupation: Dreamland at 9:00 PM. [HFA and the Crawford Peace House both put Operation: Dreamland as the heading, but use the correct film title in the text.]

Brookline Peace Works gathered last July in front of the Holyoke Center.
On the map: The World Doesn’t Need Another Unjust War

You can help the detainees prisoners of an illegal, unjust, unnecessary war by contributing to the Center for Constitutional Rights whose lawyers work to help the Guantanamo prisoners.

And more so now thanks to ABC’s ‘The Path to 9/11’ I have a humongious media agglomeration headache.

I moved this and The Imam to a Web 1.0 page Women of Islam.

But my weakly related note is time sensitive: I passed the Roxbury Mosque on Saturday. It appeared to be not quite finished. I expected it to be complete by now

*I am grateful to Kim Bruning of J’s scratchpad and Wikipedia Netherlands for reminding me of this phrase.

Harvard First Years in FUP arrive at Canaday Hall Friday evening. The rest of the class arrives Saturday morning.

Actually I don’t know if the folks above are FUP’s. They could be FOP’s or FAP’s. I tried to ask, but they wanted get their stuff and find their rooms. No, I don’t at all take it to be rude. F ? P = First year ? Program. They occur the week before First Year Orientation. So these folks are moving within Harvard.
? = (Urban|Art|Outdoor)

I’m guessing the first aid class in front of Lionel last week was part of FOP.

I did talk to a young man unloading in front of Thayer. He is a FUP. Richard Kelley ’10 chose Harvard because the financial aid package made it cheaper than anything in his native Schwarzeneggerland. Encouraging. The final verdict on the late Larry Summers’ program requires, of course, a larger sample.

It was a pleasure arriving at work today. I was greeted by a new coworker studying for her JD with a professor I regard as progressive.* She is always handsome, but today her hijab was pink. I couldn’t help but notice. I hope Allah will not find her immodest**. The only jewelry she wears is a ring professing her faith. She speaks English as well as I do except when she wants to emphasize something. Then she speaks better than I do – quite nuanced. We talked a bit about her studies. Then I asked her about the Saudi family considering excluding women from Mecca. The tension between discipline and nuance on one hand and anger on the other was quite dramatic, but not at all like my neighborwomen in Dorchester.

I was touched by American feminism in college and graduate school followed by working and politicking in Cambridge for 17 years. I am tempted to say that I think the men of the Saudi family have stepped in something or stepped on something dear to themselves, but that would be crude. So I won’t. I don’t know if I get voice an opinion in matters Islamic, but if asked …
* The TRIM petition, which was a very limited response to the loss of rent control, was very well crafted, but Mike Turk felt that past successes [real or imagined] entitled him to operate in executive capacity. That’s just not the way to build a volunteer organization. And people remembered the gross mismanagement of the breakaway Cambridge SOCC.
** One year at Lamont I had a regular who won Islamic Woman of the Year. She always wore black from head to toe. She appeared rather serious, but when I remarked on her celebrity, she giggled – a lot like the stereotypical schoolgirl. I was surprised. Then I felt something shift within me. It was a prejudice shattering.
I cannot hold the images of the Islamic women I have met at Harvard together in my head with one young mother of a four year old I saw on TV. She had made a videotape, crossed the border into Israel, made her way into a gathering, and blown herself up. “Religion” is not an adequate explanation. There has to be more, much more, for her to “voluntarily” desert her child.

The first above is a quote that James Williamson attributes to Victor Hugo*. The second is abundantly documented in the ‘alternative media’. After 9/11 many families of the victims pushed for a public inquiry. The Bush administration tenaciously fought against it. One of the ‘Jersey Girls’, Kristen Breitweiser, trained and licensed to be a lawyer though she did not practice giving precedence to a career as a mother. She circulated a petition that she be part of the panel. The Bush administration was able to quash that. Now, on the eve of a contentious midterm election ABC plans to air a two part miniseries, “The Path to 9/11” that sources [Air America Radio] claim blames it all on Bill Clinton. The alleged source for this miniseries? – The Report of the 9/11 Commission. Here’s the thing. Some of the Commissioners question that the miniseries accurately reflects the Commission Report.
The miniseries is scheduled to air Sunday and Monday evenings. There are some people trying to prevent that and claims that ABC is doing a round of last minute editing. This morning a congressperson on the Rachel Madow show, said that ABC was spending $40 Million on this project and not selling any ads. [I’ll check the podcast.]
This is a very complex and evolving story. I’ll be updating throughtout the weekend.

*So far, I cannot confirm this.

PBS together with Democracy Now! have produced a three part series about the living wage. The first installment is about Walmart and Chicago’s ‘Big Box’ Ordinance and in the Boston market airs tonight at 10:00 PM on WGBH 2. Transcripts and audio are available on the PBS website.

Zvi and Malvina discuss fine points after the panel.
Malvina [right] was one of the panelists.

Suppose that you, like me, are a new wikipedian. You’ve learned the wiki codes which is not a big deal – rather easy compared to HTML, but still takes non-zero time. You’ve learned some of the conventions of the culture. You put “your” page together and put it up on the ‘pedia. What happens then. Well, if you, like me, didn’t read ALL the conventions of the culture, you will come back some time latter and find “your” page emblazoned with banners informing you of the conventions of the culture that you didn’t read. One of these might be that you forgot to assign “your” page a category. So you then need to spend a chunk of time reading the tree of available categories. It’s not hard to find one or two quickly, but how do you know you’ve found the best categories. How do you know you’ve found all the relevant categories. It is a ‘barrier to entry’ for new Wikipedians and a problem even for some experienced Wikipedians.

Natural language Processing (NLP) is equal to automating this process to some extent. It is possible for programs to read bunches of categorized articles and collect a ‘signature’ which could then be used to match up with new articles to make suggestions for categorizing them. This could be done now. The Wikipedians are discussion whether it should be done now.

On the one hand it would make creating new articles easier. Jimmy Wales mentioned in the morning plenary that with over 1,000,000 articles in the English Wikipedia, quality of existing articles is a higher priority than creating new ones. But NLP techniques can help here too. For example, a tool that can identify population numbers could check that a given city has the same population everywhere in the ‘pedia.

On the other hand, NLP systems are complex and consume a lot of computing resources. They are ‘heavy’. Wikipedia currently is ‘light’ i.e. simple and fast. The Wikipedians would like to keep it that way. NLP techniques will be introduced cautiously.

Why have I said “your” page throughout? That’s another aspect of Wikipedia culture. Articles do not belong to the originator, the most profilic contributor, or anyone else. It’s free content baby! It belongs to the world.

Some brief remarks by Eben Moglen, President of the Software Freedom Law Center followed by a panel together with Larry Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain.

Some remarks pro and con about Hyack an interesting arguably conservative economists who does not yet have a Wikipedia page.

Mostly I work in the Economics building. [Downstairs from Andrei Schleiffer in fact.] It is right next to the Law School. Accident?

You can believe in accidents, but if you believe in accidents, science ceases to exist.

Economics, in the capitalist paradigm, can’t exist without legal definitions and enforcement of property. It was interesting to hear someone talking from the Law side.

Lessig put up Richard Stallman’s picture and described him as someone who was viewed as a crackpot in the ’80’s but in the 20th century is not. “He is a hero.”

Mention pro and con of Austrian free-market economist Friedrich Hayek.