ruminations.

filing the Internet void of thoughts on development, social change & Nicki Minaj

[monicaruminates]

On sperm donors as fathers

…Rene Almeling, a sociologist at Yale, spent four years interviewing sperm and egg donors and the staff who work with them while researching her book Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm. She found that egg donors are often encouraged to think…

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[monicaruminates]

On being a Luddite of love

Claire Evans has written an amazing essay that I just discovered. She brilliantly captures how old relationships grip our present thanks to social networking, which forces us to think about how we manage the digital appearance of friendships and romances.

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[monicaruminates]

On the idea that all love is made on the verge of departure

Every leave-taking is a reminder that nothing lasts.A romance like ours, in which absence and presence alternate like night and day, allows little opportunity to forget this fact, and that is the most notable difference between an affair of such starkly…

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[monicaruminates]

On being in the 'curatorial age'

Look at Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest. We collect our favorite things in one spot for anyone who’s interested: the era of the curator. Rather than write about ourselves directly, our personalities manifest in collections of our commercial desires, aesthetic…

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[monicaruminates]

On confidentiality and secrecy for NGOs

Very interesting food for thought here. Still chewing on it. 

In the world where most prominent nongovernmental organizations see their role in the international legal process as public advocacy, often through naming and shaming, one very prominent NGO…

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[monicaruminates]

On the democracy and physicality of language learning

On the democracy and physicality of language learning http://wp.me/sssIR-710

…Language really is different that other intellectual pursuits in its physicality.Learning to properly pronounce “Vevey” isn’t a matter of abstract theory–it’s a matter of training your mouth and tongue, in the same way a ballerina or singer trains, in…

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[monicaruminates]

On disability as a de facto welfare system

I've been catching up on This American Life podcasts this week. My mind is still fixated on the programme from a couple of weeks ago, "Trends With Benefits". Apparently, the number of Americans receiving federal disability payments has nearly doubled over the last 15 years. There are towns and counties around the nation where almost 1/4 of adults are on disability. Planet Money's Chana Joffe-Walt spent 6 months exploring why this is the case and returns with a complicated picture of what this means about the US economy as well as the larger industry that supports this structure:

Chana Joffe:  Joseph and Ethel Thomas live in a depressed town in a poor state in a national economy that is basically in the process of fully abandoning every kind of job they know how to do. Being poorly educated in a rotten place, that in and of itself has become a disability. This is a new reality. This gap between workers who are fit for the US economy and millions of workers who are increasingly not. And it's a change that's spreading to towns and cities that have thrived in the American economy. Places that made cars and steel and batteries and textiles. The disability programs are acting like a sponge, sopping up otherwise desperate people. This is happening so often in so many parts of the country, this shift from work to disability programs, that I have actually been reporting on it for years, and I didn't even know it. … David Autor:  Well, that's kind of an ugly secret of the American labor market, that part of the reason our unemployment rates have been low until recently is that a lot of people who would have trouble finding jobs are on a different program. They're on the disability insurance program. And they don't show up in the labor force statistics. And so it artificially reduces the unemployment rate that we observe. Chana Joffe:  So you're saying we all already knew it was bad. It's actually worse than we think. David Autor:  It is. It's been worse than we thought for a long time. This has been going on pretty rapidly for now more than 20 years. Chana Joffe:  David Autor says disability has become a sort of de facto welfare for people without a lot of education or job skills. Except it is the worst kind of welfare program, because it includes one feature you never, ever want from your social safety net. David Autor:  Once people go in that direction, they're unlikely to come back. Chana Joffe:  The problem with using our disability programs as a sort of quiet de facto welfare system is they're not designed to help people to deal with their disabilities, to get jobs, to make increasingly more money over a lifetime. They're not there to catch you when you fall down and help you back on your feet. Once a worker gets on disability, there are really only two ways out. You get old enough that at 65, 66-years-old, you move on to a different government program, Social Security for seniors, or you die. Those are the two ways people exit disability. Almost no one gets better. The benefits don't get you rehabilitative services or supportive technology. They just give you a monthly income. And it's not a great income, about $13,000 a year. But if your alternative is a minimum wage job that will pay you $15,000 a year-- a job you may or may not be able to get, may or may not be able to keep, that probably won't be full time, and very likely will not include health insurance-- disability may be a better option. Well let's just think about what that option means. You will not work. You will not interact with coworkers, get promoted, make more money, get whatever meaning people get from work. And assuming you rely only on those disability benefits, you will be poor for the rest of your life. That is signing up for disability. That's the deal. And it's a deal 14 million Americans have chosen for themselves. --This American Life, "Trends With Benefits" (bolding added)

The entire programme is worth a listen and really illuminates an integral aspect of how US federal benefits work that has been missing from most of the policy debates I've heard.  A lot to mull over, but so insightful in understanding why these problems seem intractable.

[monicaruminates]

On the filmability of good sex

I really like Cindy Gallop and the idea of MLNP. That being said, there are still porn stars shooting for her site and that bothers me for a variety of reasons. I think MLNP is a really cool idea - but at the end of the day, these couples are trying to convince you to pay money for a product, which means they are going to cater to the tastes of their audience instead of themselves. Good sex is rarely had at angles convenient for filming, folks. --Claire Mott, upon being asked about her thoughts on porn and alternatives like makelovenotporn.tv

A brilliantly put epistemological critique on the limits of learning about sex by watching filmed encounters. We have to seriously question and consider what other ways we can teach about good sex if the most common medium, video, is flawed from the premise.

[monicaruminates]

On being still and back to blogging

Many of the aspiring writers I know talk about writing more than they actually write. Instead of setting free the novel or short story or essay that is sizzling at the ends of their fingers, desperate to set fire to the world, they fret about writer’s block or about never having the time to write. Yet as they complain, they spend a whole lot of that precious time posting cartoons about writing on Facebook or putting up statuses about how if they only had more free time they just know they could get their novels written. They read books about writing and attend conferences, workshops and classes where they talk ad nauseam about writing. However, they spend very little time alone, thinking, much less hunkering down somewhere and actually putting words on the page. The problem is, too many writers today are afraid to be still. --Silas House, "The Art of Being Still"

Guilty as charged. In my frenzy over the last few months, I have neglected blogging. It’s been hard to be still to write properly while in the process of working out my next career move and relocating. I’ve tended my draft thoughts by scribbling them alongside endless to-do lists or muttering them to friends in passing. Sitting down alone with my ideas and words, nurturing them take root on page to flourish or wither, has felt too draining. Noncommittal notes and casual chat are not the most fruitful pastures to cultivate thinking. But new employer, new geography, and new experiences beget me to blog again. Back to putting pen on virtual paper—and as House describes—learning simply by doing:

We writers must become multitaskers who can be still in our heads while also driving safely to work, while waiting to be called “next” at the D.M.V., while riding the subway or doing the grocery shopping or walking the dogs or cooking supper or mowing our lawns. We are a people who are forever moving, who do not have enough hours in the day, but while we are trying our best to be parents and partners, employees and caregivers, we must also remain writers. There is no way to learn how to do this except by simply doing it. We must use every moment we can to think about the piece of writing at hand, to see the world through the point of view of our characters, to learn everything we can that serves the writing. We must notice details around us, while also blocking diversions and keeping our thought processes focused on our current poem, essay or book. This way of being must be something that we have to turn off instead of actively turn on. It must be the way we live our lives. The No. 1 question I get at readings is: “How many hours a day do you write?” I used to stumble on this question. I don’t write every day, but when I first started going on book tours I was afraid I’d be revealed as a true fraud if I admitted that. Sometimes I write for 20 minutes. Other times I don’t stop writing for six hours, falling over at the end like an emotional, wrung-out mess, simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated. Sometimes I go months without putting a word on the page. One night, however, I was asked that question and the right answer just popped out, unknown to me before it found solidity on the air: “I write every waking minute,” I said. I meant, of course, that I am always writing in my head.

[monicaruminates]

On femininity, according to Yohji Yaramoto

"For me, a woman who is absorbed in her work, who does not care about gaining one's favour, strong yet subtle at the same time, is essentially more seductive. The more she hides and abandons her femininity, the more it emerges from the very heart of her existence." -words from fashion designer, Yohji Yaramoto

[monicaruminates]

On the glory of integration and sin of working in silos

Because if there’s one thing any EAW [expat aid worker] worth her or his hardship allowance knows, it’s that integration and process are “good things”, always, by definition. Regardless of the task at hand, integration and inclusion can always be assumed to add value. There is virtually no facet of the aid industry or the EAW’s experience which does not benefit from additional process and/or the inclusion of other participants. There are few doctrines in the church of aid so sacred as the doctrine integration and process. Process = accountability. Integration = transparency. Process + Integration = impactful aid. And so as you no doubt expect, there is no EAW sin quite so egregious as the opposite of integration and process: “working in silos.” It has been proven, established fact since at least 2001  that working in silos has been the cause of every bad thing from the fall of Rome right up to yesterday’s badly implemented handicrafts project. “If only they hadn’t been working in silos…” is the common refrain from undiscovered humanitarian prodigies and reasonably paid evaluation consultants alike. Working in silos is at the root of what keeps MONGOs from becoming BINGOS, and LNGOS from becoming SLoNGOs. If things are going badly at the NGO, UN agency, or project the culprit is almost certainly that people – maybe even you – are working in silos. Any new leader coming in from outside or EAW recently promoted to management will serve her/his career well by rambling on about how everyone needs to stop working in silos. For those EAWs so naïve as to think that they can simply focus on their tasks, do their jobs, or keep their heads down, think again. Everyone in the agency is relevant to whatever it is that you’re working on. Just getting on with your job and doing what needs to be done with out a lot of ponderous discussion is just proof that you’re not really committed to saving the poor from poverty.  So no, actually you can’t make this decision on your own. An inclusive, integrated process matters at least as much as what actually gets done. --J, Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like,  #176 Not working in silos

As someone who recently worked in strategy, planning & evaluation in a BINGO integrating its work, I can verify this also applies to human rights workers in London. Sigh.

[monicaruminates]

On doing things that make you interesting

Our minds have a depth of field, much like the lens on a camera.  When we think about one thing, everything else becomes unclear or temporarily ‘forgotten’. To pay attention to a thing means we must ignore everything else, if only briefly. The more complex a thing is, the more uninterrupted attention is required. Do the things that make you interesting. There are many things vying for our attention, and while some of them are a good use of time, many of them are only keeping us from what we *should* be doing. Our time and headspace are the most valuable things we have, and what we can do with them is virtually unlimited. I am learning (or perhaps re-learning) that cutting out distractions can be more valuable than any to-do app or time in front of a screen. We need to spend less time looking to others for interesting things, and start spending more time doing the things that make us interesting. Perhaps you need to dedicate more time to that thing that got you where you are or that thing that will get you where you want to be. --@ableparris, "Focus Means Ignoring"

[monicaruminates]

On the political psychology of self-immolation

Here he is. Matches in one hand, petrol bottle in the other. He removes the bottle cap, drops it to the ground and douses himself in liquid. He does everything slowly, methodically, as if it were part of a routine he has practiced for years. Then he stops, looks around, and strikes a match. At this moment nothing in the world can bridge the gap that separates the self-immolator from the others. His total defiance of the survival and self-preservation instincts, his determination to trample on what everybody else finds precious, the ease with which he seems to dispose of his own life, all these place him not only beyond our capacity of understanding, but also outside of human society. He now inhabits a place that most of us find inhabitable. Yet, from there he does not cease to dominate us. “As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.” Journalist David Halberstam describes the death of Thích Quàng Đúc, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in Saigon in 1963. The quieter the self-immolator the more agitated those around him. The former may slip into nothingness, but his performance changes the latter’s lives forever. They experience repulsion and attraction, terror and boundless reverence, awe and fear, all at once. Over them he now has the uncanniest form of power. The experience is so powerful because it is so deeply seated in the human psyche. In front of self-immolation, even the most secularized of us have a glimpse into a primordial experience of the sacred. Originally, the sacred is defined as something set apart, cut off from the rest, which remains profane; what we feel towards such a radically different other is precisely a mix of terror and fascination. Self-immolation is a unique event precisely because it awakens deep layers of our ultimate make-up. In a striking, if disguised fashion, self-immolation occasions the experience of the sacred even in a God-forsaken world like ours. Self-immolation has little to do with suicide. “Suicidal tendencies almost never lead to self-immolation,” says Michael Biggs, one of the few sociologists who have studied the phenomenon systematically. Self-immolation is a deliberate, determined and painfully expressive form of individual protest.Under certain circumstances, the gesture of an individual self-immolator is enough to ignite large-scale social movements. Thích Quàng Đúc’s self-immolation triggered a massive response, which resulted in the toppling of the Ngô Đình Diem regime in South Vietnam. Only six years later, Jan Palach, a Czech philosophy student, set himself ablaze in protest to the Soviet Union’s crush of the Prague Spring. His death did not cause a regime change right away, but it shaped in a distinct manner the anti-communist dissidence in Czechoslovakia. Twenty years later, in 1989, it was a “Palach week” of street protests and demonstrations that set in motion the Velvet Revolution. More recently, in December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian street vendor, stroke a match that not only burned him to death, but set the entire Arab world on fire; we are still witnessing the aftermath of his gesture. Self-immolation is a fearsome, compelling act, but it would be wrong to infer that whenever it occurs it has significant political consequences. Michael Biggs estimates that between 800 and 3,000 self-immolations may have taken place over the four decades after 1963. Yet, only a handful of them had any political impact.What makes a death by self-immolation politically consequential is its capacity to become the focus of a community’s social life. Self-immolation is “successful” in this sense when it is not anymore about the one who performs it, but about the community in the midst of which it occurs and which suddenly recognizes itself in the predicament of the self-immolator, it feels “shamed” by his gesture and compelled to act. Thus, that individual death is re-signified, and turned from a biological occurrence in the history of someone’s body into a “founding” event of mythical proportions, something that renews the community’s political life. Politically “successful” self-immolations are extraordinary events. There are no “recipes for success” here; no science can satisfactorily explain when they should occur or why they shouldn’t. To use some kind of analogy, they are not unlike artistic masterpieces; you can recognize one when you see it, but they cannot be produced “on demand”. As such, they are inimitable and unrepeatable. Bouazizi, Đúc and Palach had many imitators, but they never managed to get out of their masters’ shadows; the more they were the less their gestures meant. This brings home the point that a politically consequential self-immolation is usually the first one in a series. Since February 2009no less than fifty-one Tibetans, mostly Buddhist monks and nuns, have self-immolated in Tibetan parts of China, yet they have not caused any significant political changes so far. Why? Because fifty-one self-immolations may be fifty too many; the more Tibetans self-immolate the clearer it becomes that there are no Quàng Đúc, Jan Palach or Mohamed Bouazizi among them. The fact that self-immolation as a form of political protest could even appear in Tibetan monastic circles may seem puzzling. Buddhism notoriously rejects violence; moreover, Tibetan Buddhism is eminently based on compassion towards all sentient beings. One of the four vows that any Tibetan monk has to take when joining a monastery is “never to take a life”. The Dalai Lama’s total embrace of Gandhi’s satyagraha is only the logical corollary of such a religious mind-set. ...That self-immolation, by all means an extreme and extraordinary act, tends now to become a routine form of political action is a very dangerous development. And, yet, just as the Chinese authorities do not signal that they want to make concessions, the Tibetans find it inconceivable to give up. The fact that all those who set themselves ablaze are young (some are teens) is telling. These are people who don’t have the memory of a pre-communist Tibet; all they could possibly have is the hope of a post-Chinese one. But, then again, with Tibet’s new demographic structure and China’s super-power status, even such a hope is unsustainable. So all they are left with is despair... --Costica Bradatan, "The political psychology of self-immolation"

Yes, self-immolation is on the list of dark/twisted/perverse things that fascinate me. Protest meets death meets mythology meets attempts to instigate social change = right up my alley. Longer post on this definitely overdue, but for the time being Bradatan's essay in the New Statesman is fantastic (hence me copying and pasting almost all of it).

[monicaruminates]

On including the concept of 'sex' when we debate about contraception and abortion

...We need to talk about families, but we also need to talk about sex. We need to talk about mothers, but we cannot ignore the existence and the rights of women who are not mothers.The GOP is waging a "War on Women", and the Democrats are fighting back – but only on behalf of certain kinds of women.Women-with-children-first framing is politically potent: it humanizes women who use birth control, or patronizes Planned Parenthood. It enables the Democrats to speak about family values (political ground that is usually ceded to the Republicans). And it makes the case for reproductive freedom without having to talk about sex – a subject that apparently makes Americans terribly uncomfortable. It's far less awkward to talk about families and motherhood, and women who get pregnant through terrible acts of sexual violence, rather than through consensual, orgasmic, sweaty hay-rolling. It boggles the mind that in a year when we all learned the phrase "transvaginal ultrasound", we are somehow still uncomfortable talking about why women like me and my friends take the pill. We don't take it so we can be good mothers, we take it so we can have good sex. There's nothing wrong with that. And as a party that claims to be fighting for women in this political war, the Democrats need to stop implying that there is. The same goes for the pro-choice advocates – myself included – who are speaking out against Republican encroachments on reproductive freedom. We should keep talking about mothers of three and about pregnant rape survivors, because those people exist and they need birth control. Their stories are also far more likely to sway people who are on the fence about birth control access than my friends' tales about casual consensual encounters. But the point that pro-choicers ought to be making is that every woman is entitled to reproductive freedom, regardless of marital status. Every woman, regardless of how many kids she has. Every woman, not just the ones who make for good talking points or political props. Every woman, even the ones who dare – unspeakable though it apparently is – to have pleasurable, non-procreative sex. --Chloe Angyal, "Sex: The missing term from the contraception and abortion debate"

Yes. Yes. Just yes. I should probably write some insightful analysis reflecting on Angyal's brilliant points. But you know what I got? Just frustration. A lot of us ladies wanna have sex and that is reason enough to want access to contraception and abortion. Our reproductive and sexual rights are not conditional on our marital status, if we have experienced sexual violence that resulted in pregnancy, or if we already have kids. Dunno if reproductive & sexual health and rights will come up in the debates tonight (maybe through a question on if contraception will be covered by insurance) but I'd put money that neither Obama or Romney will be saying the word 'sex'.

[monicaruminates]

On shredding and plussing

Consider one study by a team of researchers led by Charlan Nemeth of UC Berkeley. The researchers wanted to explore whether conflict really did play a role in generating and producing creative ideas. They assembled participants into three separate experimental conditions (minimal, brainstorming, and debate) and formed them into teams within those conditions. Each team was tasked with generating ideas for the same challenge: how to reduce traffic congestion in the San Francisco Bay Area. Teams in the “minimal condition” were given no further instructions and told to develop as many ideas as possible. Teams in the “brainstorming condition” were given the traditional set of brainstorming rules; paramount among those rules being the notion that all judgment should be suspended and no idea criticized or debated. Teams in the final, “debate condition” were given a set of rules similar to brainstorming with one important difference: they were told to debate and criticize others’ ideas as they were generated. When the results were calculated, the winners were clear. While teams in the “brainstorming condition” did generate more ideas than the teams given “minimal” instructions, it was the teams in the “debate condition” that outperformed the rest. Teams that debated their ideas produced an average of 25% more ideas than the other teams in the same period of time.  Even after the teams had disbanded, the influence of debate on generating ideas continued. In follow-up interviews with each subject, researchers asked the participants if they had any more ideas for solving the traffic problem. Participants from the “minimal” and “brainstorming” conditions did have one or two more ideas, but participants in the “debate condition” gave an average of seven additional ideas. In summarizing the results of their study, Nemeth writes “Our findings show that debate and criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other condition.” Nemeth’s research, it turns out, had already been in regular practice at one company renowned for producing consistently outstanding creative work: Pixar. For the animators at Pixar, conflict and debate is part of their morning routine. Every day teams gather first thing in the morning to review their work from the previous day. They examine each frame produced in turn and criticize nearly everything about it. No detail is too small to critique and no one is prohibited from arguing against the work of someone else. Everything from the angle of the lighting to the timing of certain sound effects is brought up and fought over. This intense process, sometimes called “shredding,” can be draining, but the Pixar teams know that the process is vital to their ability to release quality work again and again. …At Pixar, the animators have developed a technique that helps keep the fighting productive and intellectual. They call it “plussing.” As people criticize the work under review, that criticism must always contain a new idea or a suggestion for strengthening the original idea – it must contain a “plus.” Without plussing, their morning crit sessions can get pretty negative and emotionally draining. With plussing, the same meetings are imbued with a positive tone and a direct connection between criticism and newer or better ideas for their work. The meetings still feel like a fight, but they feel like the healthy, respectful fights that keep couples, creative teams, and ideas growing and changing for the better. —David Burkus, “Why Fighting for Our Ideas Makes Them Better”

I’d be interested in more details in how shredding is integrated with plussing in Pixar’s morning meetings, but very interesting techniques to generate vibrant ideas in group settings.

More generally, I feel like most people could use a bigger serving of disagreement in their lives. When I was younger, I remember being intellectually drawn to people who thought like me and agreed with what I said; as I get older, I find it is the folks I disagree with and who think differently to me that fuel my creativity and pull my ideas to their limits.

Let’s argue, baby—preferably if you can plus with me.

[monicaruminates]

On the paradoxes of the ICRC

[The International Committee of the Red Cross] displays liberal goals but pursues them through conservative means. That is, the welfare of individuals is the highest value in its mandate, but it proceeds slowly, cautiously, with minimal objectives, and mostly on the basis of the consent of public authorities. Further, it claims to be non-political but is inherently part of humanitarian politics. It professes impartiality and neutrality, but it calculates how to advance humanitarian policies that are in competition with other policies based on national and factional advantage. (2005: 2) --David Forsythe, The Humanitarians, p. 2

Astute observations by Forsythe on the contradictions of a fantastic organization.

[monicaruminates]

On the subversiveness of Pussy Riot's attractiveness

I humbly hope that our attractiveness performs a subversive function. First of all, because without "us" in balaclavas, jumping all over Red Square with guitars, there is no "us" smiling sweetly in the courtroom. You can't get the latter without the former. Second, because this attractiveness destroys the idiotic stereotype, still extant in Russia, that a feminist is an ugly-ass frustrated harridan. This stereotype is so puke-making that I will deign to be sweet for a little bit in order to destroy it. Though every time I open my mouth, the sweetness goes out the window anyway. --Nadya Tolokonnikova, in response to the question, "Does it bug you as feminists that your global popularity is at least partly based on the fact that you turned out to be, well, easy on the eyes?" (bolding added)

I got a needed smile in the midst of an otherwise somber reflection of how prison has been for Tolokonnikova, Masha Alyokhina, and Katya Samutsevich as they serve their sentence.