Chasing.Red.Chasing.Red.Chasing.Red

11th March 2008

: SHADOW DAY

Today is Shadow Day with my undergraduate mentee. He's going to shadow me, from 12:30 till 7:30, to see what being a grad student is like. Then at 7:30 we're going to Tan Hall together so he can do a presentation about my life. The presentation will be in front of all the other mentees and grad students in the program. I'm pretty sure today will go:

12:30 Check email. No new mail.
12:35 Check email. Department says copier is down.
1:00 Read for class
1:05 Check email. No new mail.
1:10 Phone rings in office. Answer.
1:11 Wrong number
1:15 Begin reading again
1:20 Check Facebook. My move in scrabble. Get excited.
1:25 Check email. Department says copier is back up.
1:30 Lunch break - 2 hours
3:30 Extend lunch break another hour
4:30 Read for class
4:35 Any new posts on Stuff White People Like?
4:36 Reminded again how awesome Stuff White People Like is and show a few choice entries to mentee. Feel confident we just bonded.
5:00 Maybe I'll get more work done in the library
5:20 Arrive at library
5:25 Get on campus WiFi.
5:30 Check email. No new messages.

And so on and so forth.

After the presentation, I'm going to find out who thought of this "Shadow a Grad Student" day and beat them up.

(19) Read. - Type.

5th February 2008

: YES, WE CAN GIVE TAX CREDITS TO THE MIDDLE & UPPER CLASSES. YES WE CAN!

It's Super Tuesday and I feel like I'm the only one who thinks Barack Obama is nothing but a bullshit artist. At this point, I can't find a single person who's not fluttering over Obama and regurgitating all those meaningless, hollow words like "hope" and "change." The worst is that terrible campaign slogan that gets shoved in my face all the time, "Yes We Can!" Like the rest of Barack Obama's campaign, it lacks a verb and direct object, making you wonder what the hell he thinks what we can do and what we should be doing to it.

I've looked on Obama's website, listened to speeches, been keeping up with the media machine that continually swoons over him, and I've still come up short on what he stands for that is so impressive. Everything I've seen is either 1) boilerplate, 2) vague and meaningless, or 3) right-leaning. Being reasonably familiar with economic growth policies, I find that almost every economic policy he lists on his website is just status quo and the typical points you'll find in any policy paper, regardless of their political view. That is to say, it's stuff that will be implemented no matter who gets elected. Whatever is original, and not vague and meaningless, is disturbingly right leaning.

It would be too much for me to go through, point by point, the econ policies listed on his website, but let's take a sampling. Barack Obama is for

1) taxing the rich and investing in health care, alternative-energy research and education (boilerplate material for Democratic primaries)

2) a permanent tax credit of up to $1,000 for families in the bottom 90 percent or so of the income distribution (right-leaning in context of the Democratic Party since more of the credit is shifted towards the middle and upper middle class)

3) paying for that tax credit by cracking down on overseas tax havens and corporate tax loopholes (meaningless)

There are other areas of his campaign like this. On foreign policy, he wants to open talks and diplomacy with our "enemies" (vague and meaningless) but he's also for bombing Pakistan, without warning or permission, if they don't cooperate with the War on Terror (right-leaning and hawkish to say the least). His health care plan won't cover everyone and really isn't that innovative or reforming (not only surprisingly unambitious but also right-leaning in terms of the Democratic Party).

Of the three original real contenders (Obama, Clinton, and Edwards), I'd argue that Obama is the most right leaning of all of them. The mistake is to assume he'll be the Democrat's Reagan - a man who's charismatic enough to push forward a radical agenda. So far I can't see anything that would signal that. On the contrary, he just seems like a guy who will concede many points to the opposition.

Which is somewhat surprising given his supporters are often the same ones who admonished Gore and Kerry for being too "centrist" and not taking "hard enough stances on what Democrats stand for." Here now we have possibly the most centrist Democratic candidate of the last eight years and everyone is head over heels cause he uses the most bullshit rhetorical crap you can find in textbook political speeches. This McSweeney's piece isn't directed at Obama, but it sure reads like everything he says (McSweeney's article is highly recommended to lay naked all of Obama's nonsense). I have a better idea about how to legitimately inspire people, how about coming up with inspirational policies and plans that we can get behind? How about challenging us to be real democrats and take part in the process, with real discussions and choices, instead of giving us sugary, nonsensical rhetoric that makes a mockery of important words?

Politics is contentious and very much a contact sport. There are real differences between the Democrats and Republicans, and many of those differences are in zero-sum games. Obama isn't just setting up a New Democrat deal like Blair and Clinton, and he's not pushing for radical left-policies like some Reagan-styled Democrat. He's just a guy who's pushing for the status quo with a little tilt towards the right, because he's ready to concede many points that the Democrats used to stand for. If the Obama supporters want status quo and rightward shifts cloaked with a pretty smile and poetry, I'm fine with that discussion. However, let's say something substantive instead using language that reads like Will.I.Am's absurd and meaningless recent piece on why he did his Barack Obama music video. Let's talk policy. What about Obama besides his rhetoric is so worthwhile?

I'll concede that if he does get the nomination, he stands a good chance of beating McCain, and probably will go down in history with all sorts of fanfare about his ability to unite Americans, largely because his oratory skills might carry him through even tough Presidential times. But to me that's just another reason why I think democracy is a terrible idea.

Lastly, if you're curious, I was supporting Edwards

(30) Read. - Type.

13th January 2008

: IN THE SUNDAY OF LIFE

A 29 year-old Asian man smokes a cigarette.

I turned twenty nine years-old. I'm just about seven days into it and I already find much to dislike about this age.

Twenty-nine is like the Sunday of life. You very much miss Saturday and remember Friday as being quite fun too. You also dread the coming Monday, which you know is going to suck. Some people are cheerful about Mondays, but those are just people who didn't have any fun on Friday and Saturday. You suppose you could party it up before Monday starts, but again, it's Sunday, and using Sunday as a Saturday is just a dirtbag thing to do.

The problem with this analogy, of course, is that another weekend never arrives. Your life is just oscillating between Monday and Wednesday. I don't even think Thursday comes.

Thirties, the Monday of life, is when you're really supposed to get serious - start owning a home, have a wife, kids, make career moves, all the things I can't see ever happening in my life. The things I want to do - train hop, photograph urban entropy, frequent bars, wander around aimlessly - all seem very inappropriate for my age. At the same time, although I don't feel like I'm fitted well for my age, I have no desire to be any younger. After twenty nine years, I've come to appreciate finer things, developed a better sense of self-awareness, and rid myself of many sophomoric beliefs. I also want to make something of my life, and my coming thirties seems like the age when I actually get a real start on it.

Therein perhaps is part of the anxiety. If I were already a professor at a college, or close to it, perhaps I would be less anxious about my age; train hopping sits better with me if I've already achieved tenure. I mean, 35 is the minimum age requirement to be the President of the United States for God's sake. Bhutto's son is 19 and he's the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party. The least I could be at the age of 29 is a professor, not some grad student with floppy hair.

Twenty-nine didn't start off all bad though. This spring, I'm taking a graduate seminar on the political economy of developing countries. I recently received the syllabus, and lo and behold, on the required readings list is an article I recently co-authored. Hopefully that's a sign of a bright work-week to come.

(26) Read. - Type.

10th December 2007

: IT'S FINALS WEEK

"Study hard for the sake of the revolution."

It's finals week. I have some cool stuff to share, but prob won't until after my last final on Friday. For now, it's worth noting that staying up late, writing papers, drinking energy drinks, and listening to rock or hip hop mp3s makes me feel five years younger in a strange twisted way.

When I used to stay up late, pulling all nighters, I used to see a certain someone at the end of it, at 6 AM. Now I don't and it's kind of a bummer. The aftertaste of Rockstar at 3AM reminds me of her.

(5) Read. - Type.

7th December 2007

: REMEMBER WHEN HIP HOP WAS FUN?

For all you youngins, since the original Pharcyde video came out 12 years ago (Jesus), click here for some context.

Hip hop used to be worthwhile.

Credit: Poplicks

(7) Read. - Type.

19th November 2007

: TWENTY ONE

First, I'm pretty sure MIT students are not this good looking and cool. Second, if they are this cool, I really regret not going to MIT. Third, if a movie is ever made about MIT political science grad students becoming bad ass master criminals, I'm just going to shoot myself in the face.

My professor offered to send me to MIT/ Harvard for a year to study. I think I'm going to take him up on that once I pass my qualifying exams. I want to know what I gave up. Was I going to be an awesome master criminal with some hot short-haired blonde pixie?

(20) Read. - Type.

11th November 2007

: RAP CHARTS

Rap represented in mathmatical charts and graphs.

(credit to

efffthatnoise for the link)

(8) Read. - Type.

6th November 2007

: NOTE TAKING

In last month's Economist, a wonderful article was published about how apes exhibit more patience than humans, but humans exhibit a sense of fairness. It's suggested at the end that a sense of fairness is genetically coded in humans, and that it was critical in the creation of societies.

Chimpanzees were nearly four times more likely to wait for the big reward than humans were. This suggests not only that the trait of patience predates the split between humans and chimpanzees, some 4m years ago, but that the trait seems more characteristic of chimps than people.

A number of researchers in the field of human evolution think that a sense of fairness—and a willingness to punish the unfair even at some cost to oneself—is humanity's “killer app”. It is what allows large social groups to form. Without it, free-riders would ruin such groups, because playing fair would cease to have any value.

The lesson? You are all chimps for waiting this long for a Note Taking post.

As always, the pass is Chasing.Red. (two capitals, two periods). I've lost my technoisworsethanwar.com site, so now I'm hosting on Rapidshare. When you click on the album link, scroll down and click the "Free" option button (unless you have an account on Rapidshare), wait two minutes for a link to come up, type in the letters and numbers for identification and then just click the download link. It's a bit more cumbersome, but unless you want to pay for my hosting, it will have to do.

I'm obviously slowing down my music posting roll. I'll continue to post in the future, but be prepared for this blog to be more about political economy, academia, and general intellectual curiosities. I'm spending more time in academia these days and hardly have time to even download music myself, let alone post it.

Lastly, direct all thanks and praise to

lettres_mortes, as this is all music he provided me.

Song: Sure Know How To Love Me by Darondo
Song: Let My People Go by Darondo
Album: Let My People Go by Darondo

Song: Nuit Sur Les Champs - Elysees (take 1) by Miles Davis
Album: Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud by Miles Davis

Song: Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday by The Sweet Inspirations
Song: Pastures of Plenty by Odetta
Album: Soul Gospel by Various Artists

Song: Sun Don't Shine by Gift of Gab
Album: Supreme Lyricism by Gift of Gab

Song: Samurai Showdown (Raise Your Sword) by Wu Tang Clan
Album: Ghost Dog Original Soundtrack by RZA/ Wu Tang

Song: You Are Mine by Eddie Ray
Song: Come On and Get It by Marion Black
Album: Eccentric Soul, The Prix Label by Various Artists

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8th October 2007

: DAILY REMINDED

When I entered community college, a little more than six years ago, I was a hard-line left wing radical. I read Emma Goldman, Noam Chomsky, Lenin, Mikhail Bakunin, and a ton of Marx. I listened to Pacifica Radio, subscribed to The Nation, and wore IWW shirts.

The summer after my first semester, I made plans to form a student club, called Class Action, through which I hoped to organize monthly teach-ins. The plan was to infiltrate and take over the student government, allocate all the money to my club, and use it to turn a sleepy community college into a hotbed of leftist intellectual activity that would "enlighten" the general student body. Basically, I learned a lot from Lenin.

Then September 11th happened. This made it all the more easy to form a radical student organization. One of the guys who joined my club was Mark Daily.

Class Action, in my modest opinion, was an incredible success. By pushing club members into student government, and having a dominating cohesive voting bloc, I had all my proposals passed over the course of the year. In the end, we received nearly $20,000 to throw our teach-ins and benefit events. At our small conservative community college in Orange County, I was able to invite Vandana Shiva, Ronald Takaki, and David Barsamian to come speak. I think there was more left wing propaganda that rolled through that school than in South Vietnam after 1975. Organizing monthly events took a lot of work, and the demands of organizing brought club members closer together. Through the club, I formed some very close friendships, most of whom my only real commonality with is our original far left beliefs.

So be it to my surprise that Mark decided to enlist in the military to fight the Iraq war as soon as we both transferred out of the junior college. Mark went to UCLA, and I to UC Berkeley. But after a short time at UCLA, Mark was off to boot camp, and then Iraq to fight against terrorism and for freedom. He wrote why he joined here, on his Myspace page.

This past January, Mark died in Iraq. He was killed by an I.E.D.

When someone makes the decision to go to Iraq, his heart deep in a sense of moral duty, it becomes a touchy matter to talk about whether or not the war is just or sensible. I kept my opinions to myself and so did all of our other friends.

I believe the differences of opinion came when Christopher Hitchens, then having a column in The Nation, engaged in virulent arguments with the rest of The Nation writers. Hitchens was the only one deeply for the war on terror and, it is clear now, on religion. Nearly everyone in the club read The Nation, and at the time, the fight between Hitchens and everyone else on the left consumed the publication. While most in our student club disagreed with Hitchens, and some (including myself) found Hitchens' writings at least worthwhile and interesting, Mark was the only one who was persuaded by him. It was because of Christopher Hitchens that my friend Mark Daily grew to believe we were in a Clash of Civilizations.

Today, my friend forwarded me this story: A Death in the Family, an article in Vanity Fair by Christopher Hitchens, where he learns about Mark.

In a way, the story was almost too perfect: this handsome lad had been born on the Fourth of July, was a registered Democrat and self-described agnostic, a U.C.L.A. honors graduate, and during his college days had fairly decided reservations about the war in Iraq. I read on, and actually printed the story out, and was turning a page when I saw the following:

"Somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. His family says there was no epiphany. Writings by author and columnist Christopher Hitchens on the moral case for war deeply influenced him … "

I don't exaggerate by much when I say that I froze. I certainly felt a very deep pang of cold dismay. I had just returned from a visit to Iraq with my own son (who is 23, as was young Mr. Daily) and had found myself in a deeply pessimistic frame of mind about the war. Was it possible that I had helped persuade someone I had never met to place himself in the path of an I.E.D.?

I'll let you read the rest.

I have a lot of respect for Hitchens, and enjoy reading him a great deal. But one has to wonder how he would have felt, and what he would conclude, if he had faced a less welcoming Daily family.

(11) Read. - Type.

29th September 2007

: TIME KEEPS ON SLIPPIN

Apologies for the lack of updates. Life has been full of changes.

Firstly, I've gotten a new roommate. We don't hang out as much as I would like, but it's been working really well aside form that. Secondly, for various reasons, my parents are splitting up. We're supposed to talk about it when I get home in December, but I'm pretty sure my father is moving to Canada. I was deeply affected upon finding out, but after thinking about it, I've accepted that it may be for the best. My parents are unhappy together, and I don't think they should stay married for the sake of my normative conception of what family life should be like. Still yet, after my father told me the news, which was on the day before the semester started, I showed up to my first graduate class drunk. Starting my grad career off with a (slurring) bang.

Bringing to my third significant change: On the day of my high school reunion, my graduate school career began.

I regrettably didn't go to my high school ten-year reunion. They say the first ten-year reunion is all very superficial. Everyone sizes each other up, trying to figure out who has been successful and who has not. The second ten-year reunion is less so, people have dropped their guards and gained a greater understanding of what matters in life (children, spouses, contentment, etc).

So I probably should have gone to the first ten-year reunion. In another ten years, when everyone at the reunion is sharing pictures of their children, I'll be little more than an unmarried, childless, musty-smelling lonely professor teaching political economy at some unknown institution in Florida. At least at this reunion, I am a graduate student at a pretty good school. Sure, most people realize graduate students are poor, involved in lowly, unimportant topics, and have very little earning potential in the future, but my life relative to others isn't going to get any better than this. It is only going to get worse. Thus, I regret not going and enjoying the glory that was all mine.

Graduate school has been unbelievably awesome. Whatever doubts I had about choosing UC Berkeley over MIT have now all faded away. The weather and campus are wonderful, my cohort is a social and fun bunch, and classes are exciting and stimulating. I feel very comfortable here, both in my intellectual ability and with my past. As an undergraduate, I often felt intimidated by graduate students, and had a sense that I didn't quite belong here, arriving in academia only by accident. There was a slight sense of shame in my poor high school record, criminal history, and slight ineloquence. But now I feel very comfortable just being myself, and feel just as qualified to be in the program as everyone else. More importantly, I've rediscovered my love for academia in general and political economy in particular.

The downside is that I have no time (which works well cause I also have no money). I literally have to count minutes everyday, and I'm often falling behind in work. Effectively, I get assigned a few books to read every week, have to work on math problem sets, and turn in essays every now and then. In the end, I'm only afforded perhaps ten hours of social time a week, three of which goes to perhaps various lunches with friends, and the remaining hours to one night out in the city, usually spent dancing and drinking. On top of that, I've committed myself to maintaining certain hobbies, such as doing photography, learning about trees, doing a little non-school related reading, and checking out new films at the PFA with Dave (

kyobu). Life has become very, very busy.

Which is what is peculiar to me when I read William Deresiewicz's old post about academia and love taboos. Deresiewicz wrote some time ago that there has been a strange and false construction of the professor as an old crank who engages in romantic taboos.

Look at recent movies about academics, and a remarkably consistent pattern emerges. In The Squid and the Whale (2005), Jeff Daniels plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In One True Thing (1998), William Hurt plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In Wonder Boys (2000), Michael Douglas plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, has just been left by his third wife, and can’t commit to the child he’s conceived in an adulterous affair with his chancellor.

Dan Drezner and Phoebe Maltz replied with a log of their real days as academics, showing a schedule that was uneventful and less than sexy. They seem to suggest that love simply wasn't an option to aloof academics, let alone strange and forbidden relationships with students.

I only half agree with them. If the stereotype of the academic is a bitter, neurotic drunkard, cruel to those he or she can be to, then I can think of more than a few examples of professors and graduate students who fit that mold. To the matter of love, taboo relationships seem to be possible everywhere. For example, at Berkeley, undergraduates across the board seem to highly revere graduate students, often forming infatuations. I myself became infatuated with a few female graduate student instructors while taking classes as an undergrad. I think part of it is due to being in awe of someone who knows so much about a subject you care about, and perhaps part of it is due to Stockholm Syndrome (you scoff, but wrongly!). But while this might seem like a gold mine for taboo graduate-undergraduate relationships, even if one wanted to, you just can't find the time. Unless some 22 year old wants to go on a study date, where we sit together in silence, separated from each other by two open books, love taboo I'm not having. And hey, I'm the first in line to be failed writer bullying my children and having taboo relationships, if time would only allow.

So there it is. Things have been very busy, but wonderfully so. I have some backed up blog thoughts I'll be putting up soon, I promise. As you may have noticed, my old site, Techno Is Worse Than War, has been taken down, so it's hard for me to host music. However, a friend of mine, Cynthia, showed me Box.net, which is where I plan to resume hosting music. I have a post coming up with albums from a Livejournal friend of mine. Until then, check out your favorite rappers on The Weakest Link (proof that hip hop makes you dumb), and this awesome online repository of documentary films.

(28) Read. - Type.

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