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This weekly feature, which will essentially recount what happened during every Sunday’s Senate meeting, should make the Senate more accessible to their voters. I’ve decided that our student government could use more rapid transparency. Though the Student Union is open to its voters, there isn’t anything directly informing the student body of what their senators are doing  from week to week.

Continue reading “Student Senate in a Nutshell: Resignations, Elections, Administrative Clash”

 

This is Pete Seeger’s banjo, emblazoned with the phrase “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender”

 

For me, one of the most romantic stories of my musical education at Brandeis has been the rediscovery of “This Land is Your Land.”

We all know the opening stanza to the song –

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Most people don’t know the last, famously “lost” stanzas –

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Puts a new spin on things, huh? This Land is Your Land was actually written as the liberal counterpoint to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”

And here’s Pete Seeger, the folk muse of the land, reteaching the common history of America to millions of people, for President-Elect (but not for long) Barack Obama’s pre-inaugural musical celebration:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg0wiOHc9tI[/youtube]
Continue reading “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”

Our beloved Student Union Vice President, Adam T. Hughes, is resigning from his position as Student Union Vice President, effective some hours ago. He’s also leaving the Brandeis campus for the next semester, for personal and unexpected reasons.

Adam, we’ll miss you. I hope everything works out in the end.

Continue reading “Vacancies in the Student Union”

You all may have seen the email sent by the Director of Study Abroad, Mr. Van Der Meid, several days ago. With little apology or consultation with those wishing to study abroad next semester, the letter announced that all students studying abroad in Spring 2010 would be housed in the Village. It further announced that any merit-based scholarship would not be transferrable to pay for study abroad. Whoah.

The administration provided only allusions to the reasons for these changes. It seems they plan on housing all of the study abroad kids in the village in order to “continue to house the incoming mid-year class together.”

I wonder – does this mean they plan on putting all the mid-years in the Village vacated by the study abroad kids? That would be the simple switch-up. Or is there some other housing shuffling shenanigans in the works of which we are unaware? I don’t understand this at all – people studying abroad already are gone from campus for one semester. Now, they will all be put in the Village, seperating them from their on-campus friends for the fall semester as well!

Even worse in my mind, however (and I am a bit biased), is the non-transferrability of merit scholarships. Students who received these scholarships in their acceptance letter were specifically told that they would be transferrable to study abroad – if you doubt me, here’s my scholarship letter (click for bigger): Continue reading “Anger at Study Abroad Changes”

As a Jewish American I find myself struggling to find a place in the anti-war movement against Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. Last evening I went with a small contingent of Brandeis Students to attend a demonstration in front of the Israeli Consulate which then marched over to the Massachusetts State House. I wanted to go to voice my opposition to attacks. Personally I believe that the strike on Gaza has killed far too many innocent civilians and is ultimately bad for Israel’s long-term security (though it undoubtedly has a short-term benefit).

Even though I knew what I would find when I got there, I still found the protest very disturbing. I was bothered when the marchers freely chanted about ‘genocide’ and ‘holocaust’ in the Gaza Strip, but I was willing to stay in the march because I still agreed with the goal of ending the war. I became really uncomfortable when the chanters with the megaphone began to yell, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!” I support the State of Israel, proudly. I’m a Zionist, I believe that it is important for the Jews to have a homeland; and even if I weren’t, I would still recognize that six million Jews live in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and they aren’t going to go anywhere. The lesson learned from the creation of the State of Israel should be that no one people can control that entire land; which is why I, like most other Jews, support the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories.

I left the march finally after a new chant began “Free Palestine! Long Live Palestine! Long Live the Intifada! Intifada Intifada!” I oppose the Intifada for the same reason why I oppose the attacks in Gaza; we have to create peace by peaceful means and not by war. The anti-war movement needs to welcome Jews and supporters of the State of Israel into the fold. There are countless Jewish organizations (Rabbis for Human Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, to name a few) that support peace and oppose the occupation.

I don’t know exactly how to conclude this, so I’ll put in a plug for an event. Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine are holding a vigil for the victims in Gaza, this Tuesday (Inauguration Day!) at 6 PM in Upper Usdan. I’d urge everyone who supports peace to attend.

Few people know, unless they’ve had a class with Gordie, that he was invited onto the O’Reilly Factor shortly after 9/11.  After seeing the video, I was astonished that it wasn’t on youtube so I just recently got the dvd from him, converted the video files so they were youtube friendly, and put it up for everyone to see.  Check it out!

Part 1 here

and Part 2 here!

So Ted Sorenson has come and gone. He had some nice anecdotes, some nice turns of phrase. Most memorable? “If we had the 24-hour news cycle back during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we probably would have bombed those Cuban installations and started a Nuclear War.” It was nice to see a sort of montage of memorable inauguration speeches preceding his remarks. He was sometimes funny, always interesting.

You know what’s really cool? He’s on the Board of the Ethics Center (or something). Cool! I want to know more about that. Maybe he can use his vaunted connections to recoup the 400 thousand dollar shortfall in the Ethics Center Budget.

I did ask him a question at the end. It went along the lines of “Obama talks a lot about Post-Partisanship. What does that mean to you? For us liberals, it seems to be remarkably similar to “centrism” or moving to the right. Can you assuage those fears?”

His response was something along the lines of “stop whining, trust us.”

I trusted the government once. I’m disinclined to do that ever again.
Continue reading “Ted Sorenson liveblog”

Please welcome guest poster Jon

On January 2^nd, Question 2, the Massachusetts imitative to decriminalize marijuana possession, came into effect. As (co-)President of Students for Sensible Drug Policy on campus, I am, of course, in favor of any steps that can end the senseless damage the War on Drugs has wreaked on our communities. This is why the November passage of Question 2 was such a satisfying victory.

However, it now appears that a loophole in the initiative has all but legalized marijuana in the state. As passed, Question 2 reduces the penalty for possession (up to one ounce) to a $100 fine, plus mandatory drug counseling for minors. However, police chiefs across the state are essentially giving up on enforcement altogether:

…in what is likely a clever sleight of hand by legalization advocates, the law, by pulling arrest off the table as an option, deprives police officers of any means to compel people caught with marijuana to show identification. Anybody willing to say “Donald Duck” to a cop who nabs him with a joint and asks for a name can escape even the $100 fine.

Marijuana is now not only de facto legal in a few Massachusetts communities because police find the requirements of decriminalization too demanding, it is now effectively sanction-free in the entire state for anybody willing to face down a cop.

Continue reading “Did we accidentally legalize pot?”

What if, four days before the inauguration, a national coalition presents President Obama with a request from Brandeis – please, end extreme poverty by 2015.

It’s possible.

The MCN posted an idea on change.org for how Obama should end extreme poverty by 2025.  Change.org will present the 10 most popular ideas to Obama at the national Press Club on January 16th.  This is an immense chance to bring ending extreme poverty to the forefront of the policy arena.

The idea states that Obama should fund the Millennium Development Goals as a way to end extreme poverty.

The MCN = the Millennium Campus Network, a Brandeis-founded network of “university student groups in the Boston area committed to supporting the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to eradicate extreme poverty.”

The idea is that we take the MCN idea – written by Brandeis students Rachel Berman-Vaporis and Allyson Goldsmith – and vote it up on Change.org so that it turns into one of the top 10 ideas, which will then be presented to Obama.

Please take 30 seconds to vote for this idea to elevate the importance of global poverty and show that students are engaged. The voting ends on January 15th.  Thank you for your time and support.

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/end_extreme_poverty_by_2025

Steps to vote:
1. Click on the blue vote box
2. Create an account (they won’t send you tons of e-mails)
3. Click on the link in the confirmation e-mail
4. Click on the blue vote box again to record your idea

Apparently it’s already a big deal that “a Brandeis organization has made it so far in a national non-collegiate contest and could possibly go further,” according to Rachel. Cool!

As we ring in the new year, I’d like to thank everyone for sticking with us and reading Innermost Parts – even during break!

 

So thanks for reading, I appreciate it.

 

As we enter the new semester, I want Innermost Parts to take the next step in journalistic evolution. We’re going to professionalize, have weekly meetings, hopefully become chartered, etc.

 

To that end, we need more writers. Passionate writers. The fact that you’re reading Innermost Parts right now is a pretty good indicator that you have the right drive and interests. The fact that you’re in college means you have the writing skills.

Work for us. Join us!

Innermost Parts brings on a new coterie of writers each semester. Right now we’re taking applications for Spring 2009. Writing fellows are given great freedom and flexibility, but also take on a fair share of responsibility. To a great extent, we’re all equal – veterans and people on their day as well.

In our founding documents, we set out to fill “a vacuum at Brandeis, a need for an unfettered and free-flowing discussion of the forces, both on campus and around the world, which affect us as students.” We wanted Brandeis to be a “space for intellectual honesty, a place for honest communications, a model of democratic government, a center of freedom of expression.”

Innermost Parts aims to be a center for progressive discussion based in Brandeis University. Our goal is to promote the progressive movement on campus, and spread the principles -and actualization- of social justice.

If you think we’ve got a good thing going, come join us! If you think we’re not living up to our potential, help us reach it.

Please email the Innermost Parts team at

So apparently foreign ships are dumping nuclear waste and illegally fishing off Somalia’s coast.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

And the fish that are left will be radioactive mutant fish.

The article suggests that piracy in Somalia is in part a reaction to the “European attack.” Huh.

I was talking to a friend today. This friend did not want to write certain things for fear of being put on a no-fly list in a certain country.

Being put on a no-fly list is a pretty big deal. Getting in and out of the country changes from a routine annoyance of half-a-day’s time to a potentially crippling train ride out of the country to the nearest airport.

Imagine planning a trip to Europe with friends when one apologetically declines. The UK thinks he’s a terrorist threat. Your trip may be worse for the loss. His trip is canceled. The way you think of him, or more importantly the way he thinks you thinking of him, might never be the same.

Anyways, I guess everyone knows about the extraordinary hassle being put on a no-fly list is. But when it happens to someone you know, it feels more real, all of a sudden.

Read this in the New York Times

. Witness the unusual suggestion made in early December by the chairman of the faculty senate at Brandeis University, who proposed that the school’s 300 professors and instructors give up 1 percent of their pay.

“What we are doing is a symbolic gesture that has real consequences — it can save a few jobs,” said William Flesch, the senate chairman and an English professor.

He says more than 30 percent have volunteered for the pay cut, which could save at least $100,000 and prevent layoffs for at least several employees. “It’s not painless, but it is relatively painless and it could help some people,” he said.

I think that 30% figure is news(!) about us(!) in the New York Times(!).
There’s two ways to think about it:
a. We’re famous enough to be in the NYT
b. The whole world gets to know about the machinations regarding the budget before we do.

Or of course maybe everyone but me knew about this already. To be clear, I mean the news that 30% of faculty have signed up for the voluntary cut, not that any have.

In any case, now we know.

So there’s a certain shithole of a website that people are trying to ban.

Now, I’m very much an opponent of banning websites. The sort of opponent that gets angry at phrases like

“It’s important to question whether our First Amendment rights should trump our morality. We’ve fought for these rights, and we value them, but where do we draw the line?”

Still, I keep hearing more and more cases of people being absolutely devastated by the people writing gossip on the site. There have been, I bet, many secret trips to the Dean’s office, psychologists, or health center.

It’s important that the problem is not the technology, but the vicious knot of people who use anonymity as a sword instead of a shield. Still what are we going to do?

Seriously. I’m against banning websites, but the status quo is horrible. What can be done?

What with the latest unpleasantness going on in the Middle East, I figured Brandeis’ in-house Think Tank, The Crown Center for Middle East Studies would have, you know, thought up something to say.

Instead their latest publication is about “A Landscape of Fragmentation in Saudi Arabia“. Which, you know, is probably important. It probably took a while to write, research, etc. There’s no objection to academic outfits doing legwork rather than just chasing what’s popular.

The thing is, the Crown Center as an institution has said nothing about the current war so far. Individual members have done interviews or been quoted in the media, but nothing from Crown itself.

Well, that’s not too big a deal. I mean, the individual scholars are probably doing feverish research, maybe some diplomacy, to deal with the situation. They have lives and other professional obligations, I’ll bet. But still. This seems pretty highly unusual.

The obvious guess is that Crown is cowed, unable to articulate a position or draw an analysis that won’t upset a potential donor. Donors are rather precious right now.

I don’t think that’s the case, however. Not with the Crown Center; I have a heap of respect for those guys. Still, the guns roar, the rockets fall, the children scream, and yet they are silent.

Afterthought: Of course, if anyone from Crown wanted to come to the blog and educate us on the issue, that’d be much appreciated. If my tone didn’t come across right, let me state it now – “I’m dying to know what the people at Crown think. Come on, let us read the goodies!”

The Obama Transition Team wants to set up a “National Day of Service” on January 19th, the day before Inauguration day (and, also, during Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend). You can find events in your area using the inauguration website, which is set up a lot like My.BarackObama.com.

Currently, there is none such event in Waltham. The closest is a training on energy conservation in Newton.

Come on! Waltham Group, this is your moment to shine! Everyone else – this is the perfect time to start meeting President Gray’s challenge for every club to have a community service component.

Also – smart famous people think that Obama is Laying Groundwork for Post-Inaugural Citizen Service with the robust tools on the website. Be warned.

My friend Rivka, who knows so much more than I do about American politics, tells me to be excited. Here’s why:

From “Ask not…” to “Yes we can” — JFK’s Speechwriter on What Makes Inaugural Addresses Great

Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Time: 7-8:30pm
Location: Shapiro Campus Center Theater

As special counsel and chief speechwriter to President John F. Kennedy, Theodore “Ted” Sorensen helped author one of the most memorable inaugural addresses in American history. An early supporter of Barack Obama and Chair of the board of the Ethics Center, Sorensen will discuss his career, the inaugural speeches of presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton, and how Obama might best introduce his presidency to the world.

Faculty respondent Peniel Joseph. Cosponsored by the Student Union and Gen Ed Now

I note with approval that my old prof. Joseph is still undisputed king of faculty panels at these events. Go team!

A while ago the New York Times Magazine had a college essay contest. “In the turbulent late ’60s and early ’70s, college campuses played a major role in the culture and politics of the era. Today, according to author and historian Rick Perlstein, colleges have lost their central place in the broader society and in the lives of undergraduates. ”

The contest has long expired. The prompt essay, by Rick Perlstein, is still up.
Wow. Here’s something that get’s you thinking critically about your environs.

You really should read the whole thing, but here’s a tasty morsel:

There is something that these very different students share. Just as the distance between the campus and the market has shrunk (perhaps not that surprising at Chicago, home of the market-based approach to almost everything), so has the gap between childhood and college – and between college and the real world that follows. To me, to Doug Mitchell, to just about anyone over 30, going to college represented a break, sometimes a radical one – and our immediate postcollege lives represented a radical break with college. Some of us ended up coming back to the neighborhood partly for that very fact: nostalgia for four years unlike any we had experienced or would experience again. Not for these kids.

Hamilton Morris, with his hip, creative parents, is an extreme case of a common phenomenon: college without the generation gap. (As I write this at a coffee shop near campus, a kid picks up her cellphone – ”Hi, Dad!” – and chats amiably for 15 minutes. ”When we went to college,” a dean of students who was a freshman in 1971 tells me, ”you called on Sunday – the obligatory 30-second phone call on the dorm phone – and you hoped not to hear from them for the rest of the week.”)

Morris is an exaggeration too of another banal new reality. You used to have to go to college to discover your first independent film, read your first forbidden book, find freaks like yourself who shared, say, a passion for Lenny Bruce. Now for even the most provincial students, the Internet, a radically more democratic and diverse culture – and those hip baby-boomer parents – take care of the problem.

…

Why aren’t people paying attention to the campuses? Because, as a discrete experience, ”college” has begun to disappear. My radical, alienated friends brought up the University of Chicago’s marketing materials: bucolic images of a mystic world apart, where 18-year-olds discover themselves for the first time in a heady atmosphere of cultural and intellectual tumult. But college no longer looks like that. They wondered how long the admissions office thought it could get away with it before students started complaining they’d been swindled. I posed the question to a brilliant graduating senior, someone I’ve been friends with for years. ”They’re assuming that the marketing is for students,” he explained. ”It’s not. It’s for parents.”

Ryan McElhaney, current Director of Community Development, is resigning. His office has been changed to “Director of Community Advocacy” and is currently unfilled. More information about how to apply for that position available by “the second week in January to be nominated by January 25th”.

The Office of Student Rights and Advocacy (OSRA) will have it’s director join the executive board. Pursuant to a confirmation by the Senate (which I expect will happen), expect current director of OSRA, Laura Cohen, to join the Union Executive Board.

Lastly, Andrew Brooks is the new Executive Senator, a position that entitles him to join the Union E-Board and chosen by a majority vote of the senate. (Or is it plurality? Someone tell me in the comments please).

Brandeis University president Jehuda Reinharz just sent out an email letter to the entire campus titled (and regarding) “Brandeis and the Economy update”.

There’s not much news there. Yes, Brandeis has been suffering. Yes, l’affaire Madoff has not damaged the endowment directly, but, “sadly, Brandeis’s most staunch and generous supporters suffered major losses.” There will be more budget cuts. Since students need more financial aid, but tuition is pays for about half of operating costs, we’re in a bit of bind.

Here’s the most interesting graf –

The Special Faculty Advisory Committee and the Student Advisory Committee have provided important and thoughtful insights and information to the senior administration in order to help us identify, examine and optimize the university’s core strengths and strategic assets. Based on those discussions, the University Budget Implementation Committee, which includes four university trustees, is working closely with the administration and is making substantial progress. As we begin the new semester, we will continue to work collaboratively with the student and faculty committees, which are helping us navigate through the financial crisis. And, we look forward to strengthening working relationships with the Faculty Senate and other faculty and student leaders. It is clear that the university will be forced to examine proposals for additional cost reductions to address anticipated and unanticipated budget shortfalls, and we will reconvene discussions with the appropriate working committees at once. The speed and intensity of this financial crisis is unprecedented, and it will require the university to respond to events in an extraordinarily abbreviated timeframe.

That was alarmingly vague. In what ways are faculty, staff, and students consulted and involved? Do they meet once a week or once ever? What powers and access to information do students and faculty have, exactly? Without these concrete details, we have nothing but the fragile soap bubble of good sentiments.

Here is the full letter:
Continue reading “Jehuda’s note on fiscal troubles”

I found this and thought it was funny. It’s a mashup of Sesame Street and V for Vendetta.
“What happens in a futuristic world where the consumption of cookies is controlled by the government?”[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9rzMaAucI4[/youtube]

The race to replace Rahm Emmanuel’s seat in Congress (IL-5) will be intense. But here’s something cool – Thomas Geoghegan, mensch and hero is reportedly in the running.

Who is Thomas Geoghegan?

To the extent Tom is known publicly, it’s mainly because of his books, like Which Side Are You On?, The Secret Lives of Citizens, and In America’s Courts. These really are masterful and original pieces of thinking and writing, which most writers would be content with as their entire contribution to the human endeavor during the period Tom has turned them out. Which Side, which was published in 1991, begins this way:

‘Organized labor.’ Say those words, and your heart sinks. I am a labor lawyer, and my heart sinks. Dumb, stupid organized labor: this is my cause.

The remarkable thing is that in Geoghegan’s case writing has been a sideline. Day by day for several decades he has been a lawyer in a small Chicago law firm representing steel workers, truckers, nurses, and others employees whose travails are the reality covered by abstractions like “the polarization of America” and “the disappearing middle class.” Geoghegan’s skill as a writer and an intellectual are assets but in themselves might not recommend him for a Congressional job. His consistent and canny record of organizing, representing, and defending people who are the natural Democratic (and American) base is the relevant point.

Admirers have raised $10,000 already in anticipation of his bid. If he ends up running this is big news. If he ends up winning it’ll be a huge win for Americans everywhere.

Has anyone else been telling their families that we have no admissions building and the Shapiro family lost all their money? Well… The Justice did an article on it, posted online December 26 here. Notice how Brandeis itself hasn’t released anything…

I was reading an article by Chris Hayes that I think you might like.

People like me, lucky enough to go to fancy schools, get taught that from a very early age that we can do anything, and that whenever we have an idea, people are going to want to listen to it. But there are millions of people in this country who go through life with people–their bosses, or spouses or parents–saying “Who cares what you think?” And one of the most profound effects of union organizing is to help people believe that others should care what they think.

Read it all here.

Well, it’s 2009, which to me translates as, “Oh G-d, Spring semester starts soon and I don’t have my books!!!” And as the price of postage goes up, shipping costs rises–and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay $4 shipping on a $3 used book. Thus, I have come to share a webesite with you: TextbooksRUs. The quality of their prices vary (some books are really cheap, some are insanely overpriced), but shipping’s always $1. Check this website against Amazon; sometimes you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Two nights ago, Talie, Shelly, and Sahar Massachi rejoiced. Their parents were gone for the evening, so the children would spend a night out on the town eating hibachi, then in the warm , blanket-covered confines of their home watching two rented movies. One featuring a machine with the soul of a man, the other featuring a man encased in the shell of a machine.

“Iron Man is a scathing critique of American imperialism…a fascinating character study, a compelling Cold War critique, a subtle plea for liberal internationalism, and a defense of a series of theses presented to the world in America’s founding documents.”
“Iron Man, who represents an imperial America, can only win Pyrrhic victories. ”

Interested in the argument behind those quotes? I’ve been meaning to watch Iron Man ever since I read Spencer Ackerman’s brilliant essay, “Iron Man Versus the Imperialists”, back in May.

Iron Man represents the evolution of American psyche throughout the Vietnam era. Originally a straightforward symbol of American technological advances leading to military might, Iron Man was used as a straightforward thrasher of the Vietnamese. As doubt about the war mounted at home, his authors re-evaluated his persona. Iron Man, a symbol of the military-industrial complex, explored structural critiques of imperialism, the nihilism of hedonism, the dangers of mixing wide-eyed ideals with military adventure.

Iron Man is a superhero. Cold-War product or not, Marvel couldn’t very well turn him into a villain. Writers in the 1970s and 1980s solved the problem in two creative ways. First, the comic adopted the New Left’s structural critique of Vietnam — the war was the inevitable product of a systemic belief in unrestricted capitalism, American exceptionalism, and racism — by making Stark Industries an enemy of poor Tony Stark, who had unleashed malevolent forces he couldn’t control. Thus Iron Man’s nemesis became a black-mirror version of himself: the ruthless metal juggernaut (another metal-suit weapon) subtly named Iron Monger, controlled by rival defense-industry bloodsucker Obadiah Stane. More cleverly, Stark’s best friend Jim Rhodes became a second Iron Man — but one sent into a paranoid frenzy of destruction by the armor’s inability to interface properly with his brain. Rhodes’s secret identity? War Machine.

The second way Marvel subtly readjusted Iron Man for America’s post-Vietnam sensibilities was to reveal that the reason Stark could control neither his company nor his relationships was that he couldn’t control himself. Stark’s booze-soaked, womanizing lifestyle was cleverly reinterpreted as rampant alcoholism and self-loathing. His drive to save the world was nothing more than a martyr complex born of a callow solipsism. It was a brilliant maneuver by the writers. Iron Man began to ask America: Would you trust such unfettered, unaccountable power to someone this messed up? The introduction of War Machine took the critique a step further, showing that the very act of donning the armor makes you messed up. Some exercises of power are too dangerous to be left in the hands of one man. The writers never turned Iron Man into a villain — that would have been the easy way out. Instead they presented a fascinating character study, a compelling Cold War critique, a subtle plea for liberal internationalism, and a defense of a series of theses presented to the world in America’s founding documents. It helps that Iron Man also blows stuff up.

Really, read all of it. Then read about the Superman Approach to Foreign Policy.
Continue reading “Iron Man”

One week ago, US Airways put me on 4 cancelled flights and took 14 hours to turn a 1 hour flight to Rochester into a 1.5 hour flight to Buffalo, with an attendant 2-hour drive to Rochester. I spent the next day trying to track down my luggage. It turns out that in my haste not to miss my original flight, I forgot to pack the charger for my laptop.

Bereft of music, I’ve been relying on Last.fm. It’s great! It has a feature where it tracks every song you play on your desktop media player, and the online last.fm player automatically chooses which tracks to play based on that history.

Now, the world has the “gift” of Google Chrome’s porn mode, isn’t it time for last.fm to have one too? Spare the embarrasment of having Justin Timberlake or Duffy blasting from your “reccomended” station when friends are about.

It’s perfect and I don’t see why it doesn’t exist already.

So I’d like to introduce the idea of “break blogging”, where, during a break, all bets are off and we write about whatever pops to mind. But as soon as school starts, we’ll go right back to being Brandeis-focused.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m on a bit of a holiday break. Expect light posting ’till school starts etc. etc.

Here’s some holiday reading!
Flathead and The Datsun and the Shoe Tree.

Here at Innermost Parts we’re big fans of the nutrition listserv.

The latest email probably helps to explain why I’m always so sleepy:

For many college students, exams, followed by the holidays and semester break result in behaviors that foster regrets. The common denominator? Impulsive and chaotic eating. Not to say that you have to be strict with your regular eating pattern, but it’s not a bad idea to apply some structure and commitment. Take time to check your schedule and plan for meals and/or snacks every 3-5 hours. Limit your caffeine and sugary foods. And include protein for added “brain power”. An overindulgence in carbs can end up making you sleepy….Good luck with finals and enjoy your break!

Subscribe to the nutrition listerv! Email logara@brandeis.

So this video is making the rounds. It’s a very simple story: Bush gets attacked by shoe-wielding journalist, Bush has unexpected ninja-like skills, liberals get cheap bipartisan cred for praising Bush on said skills.

It seems to me that we’re forgetting something – the nefarious shoe-wielding assailant is screaming by the end of the video. The New Times has more:

Mr. Maliki’s security agents jumped on the man, wrestled him to the floor and hustled him out of the room. They kicked him and beat him until “he was crying like a woman,” said Mohammed Taher, a reporter for Afaq, a television station owned by the Dawa Party, which is led by Mr. Maliki. Mr. Zaidi was then detained on unspecified charges.

Other Iraqi journalists in the front row apologized to Mr. Bush, who was uninjured and tried to brush off the incident by making a joke. “All I can report is it is a size 10,” he said, continuing to take questions and noting the apologies. He also called the incident a sign of democracy, saying, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves,” as the man’s screaming could be heard outside.

Beating the shit out of dissenting citizens. Truly, a hallmark of our enlightened democratic order.

update: free Muntadar!
Continue reading “That shoe-wielding assailant”

They allow workers to stand up for their rights. Unions don’t take no shit from no one. In this situation, a company tried to file for bankruptcy, and not pay their workers their pensions, healthcare, back pay, etc. That’s illegal. They would have gotten away with it, too, except the workers occupied the factory and demanded what they were legally owed. The union provided the solidarity and organization for that to happen.

The Labor Beat video group is putting together a documentary about the victorious occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago. The filmmakers were—unless I’m mistaken—the only media group given constant access to the inside of the factory during this action. They’ve put up a ten minute selection of footage on YouTube:

So, due to the efforts of Brandeis students who came before, a fraction of the University Endowment is mandated to be set aside for investing in Socially Responsible Investment. I think there’s a Union Committee or something kicking around that gets to take a look at it.

Why do we care? What is the utility of Brandeis investing in ethical companies?

Of course, there’s the psychic satisfaction of knowing that we’re not part owners of Raytheon or Halliburton, or suchlike. There’s the symbolic value of taking a stand. There’s the boost in stock price / market cap we might be bringing to small ethical companies that could use the boost.

Is that all we’re fighting for? Symbolism, feeling good about ourselves, and maybe boosting the stock price of a company by pennies?

There should be a utliity to investment that goes beyond our dollars. In fact, that’s the whole point.

Years ago, ther was a movement to ban Kraft foods from the shelves of the C-Store. No more Easy Mac. Why? Kraft was owned by Altria, the parent company/name name of Phillip Morris, the Tobacco Company. Now, cigarettes are inherently bad in that they kill people, but I think Phillip Morris was using really unethical practices to push cigs to children or something abroad. Really sick stuff that we thankfully outlawed in the US. In any case, the motion to ban Easy Mac came to a campus referendum. It lost by 17 votes or something tiny like that.

Turns out that the whole process was being closely watched by Kraft foods themselves! They were very worried about Brandeis – what if other colleges took up the cause, bringing attention to the company, maybe the media would pick it up, maybe it would turn into a cause celebre, whatever. Point is, they were scared of our potential. We have power here because Brandeis, like other Universities, functions as a sort of shining beacon on the hill of a better world. We have the potential for being famous, due to being on the campus of a (relatively) famous university. Fame is power.

The same principle applies here. The point of ethical investment is not the investment itselof. Rather, the point is to leverage the investment into power. Power to cajole/compete/compel others to do the same. We should be trumpeting our ethical endowment, not hiding it.

Now, endowment-wise, we’re no where where we should be. Even the function of CEER is circumscribed – they have to specifically ask Jean Eddy (?) about every possible firm, one at a time, complete with reports and so on. It’s not a very efficient system. And, of course, we don’t have endowment transparency.

But for the part of the endowment that’s already invested well (ie for “goodness sake”) – why are we not publicizing this more? That’s the whole point, after all.

So I’m trying to set up my xbox as an ftp server, but it turns out that I have the wrong kind (too new). If anyone has an (original) xbox that they want to trade with me, I’d be very grateful.

There’s nothing wrong with mine, (it’s probably newer and better than yours!) just that its much harder to install webserver software on the newer ones.

Or if anyone wants to donate an old used computer, that’d work too. 😉
Is there a way to get/buy old crappy computers from the school?

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming…

So we already knew that our endowment returns have been in the negative teens. We knew that Brandeis was facing a 10 Million Dollar Shortfall.

It seems that other elements of the Brandeis financial pantheon are doing even worse.

The Shapiro’s foundation lost half its value. No one knows how much the Shapiros themselves lost. Tom Friedman, member of the board, once owned a part of a 3.6 billion dollar family trust through his wife. That trust now holds less than $25 million.

Just something to keep in mind – compared to some other schools and institutions, a drop of just “in the teens” of endowment value makes our financial management seem to be a model of prudence.

And, this is just me saying, ok, that maybe if we had invested in socially responsible mutual funds we’d have done even better, or maybe not. Maybe we didn’t do so bad because we were already invested in socially responsible companies. The point is, we have no way of knowing.

Hopefully CEER will try and take care of that.