I’ve decided to move on from this blog.  As my intellectual and political interests have shifted, so have my needs for writing.   My goal was to try and build a successful blog that I would want to read, and I think I finally did that towards the end.  I started this adventure in the middle of summer and got up to around 15k hits with some off and on posting, and I consider that a success.  I hope to someday return to doing political journalism/blogging.

The blog had two flaws in my mind:

1. A poor name.  can’t lie, it kinda sucked.

2. No organizing theme – it’s mostly about my life and random thoughts, but with a pretension of something bigger.  My pretense was bigger than my writing could handle day-to-day.

I’m keeping the blog up as a monument to a very interesting time in my life that saw a lot of personal, political, and intellectual development.  I hope to continue that elsewhere, but I don’t think the precendents set on this particular site best serve what I’d like to do with my writing during an important time in my life.

Onward.

Check this: Karl Rove is trying to lead a challenge to Eric Holder’s nomination as AG of the US. I don’t think Rove or any other part of the GOP cares particularly about Eric Holder per se, they care about Holder’s connections to Clintons, who they would like to tie to Obama.  It’s an effort to re-inscribe the partisan frame around Obama and his Administration  – and points out the risks O took in bringing so many Clinton-types into the fold when building his Administration.

Ooops, forgot to post today.  Busy busy.

In the meantime, read this excellent article by Arundhati Roy on Mumbai, and the historical background to the terrorist attacks there.

Was dope as fuck.  Great turnout, lots of fun despite a few sound hiccups.

Check the TBNYU! blog for a word from the folks who made it happen.

And, a shoutout:

I’m actually kinda down with the new features on the NYTimes’ “Extra” homepage, which essentially lists related blog/web content for each story on the Times homepage.  It’s clearly not a full-fledged project, but I think it signals an important transition in the way the NYT does news coverage, becoming a site that sorts and prioritizes other content in a kind of ‘curation’ role. The Times is particularly well suited to trade in on its cachet, large circulation, and status as the ‘paper of record’ for much of the US, turning its good rep into a position as the sorter and curator of record.  This is essentially a way for the Times to set the agenda for the rest of the web, and make itself the new record-maker for web journalism.

I don’t know why this all happened at once, but I came across 2 really dope articles, that give me heart that the world isn’t totally awful:

US Agency Posts ‘Most Wanted’ List for Eco Crimes – Now, normally I would expect that this list would be of so called ‘eco terrorists’, with associated absurd rhetoric.  However, the list is actually of polluters who have dodged their fines or punishment.  Quite novel considering the overblown fanaticism that is the Green Scare.

No new coal – the calling card of the ‘green Banksy’ who breached fortress Kingsnorth – Someone just walked into a giant coal-fired power plant and turned it off.  Seriously, that simple.  They didn’t climb anything, no drama, just found their way in, and jammed a turbine, and left a message why.  Really dope.  Part of the message seemed to include a statistic claiming shutting the turbine reduced UK CO2 emissions by 2%, which points out how easy it could be to target a select number of companies/producers and vastly reduce carbon footprints.

ctrl-alt-del. from corture.freak's flickr

I love the recent electronic/electric metaphors flying around US foreign policy these days – first the Bush “Surge” metaphor used to describe the war, now the Obama “reboot” metaphor for his approach to the ‘Muslim world’ (btw, what is the ‘Muslim world’? This term probably needs some unpacking too…).

The ‘Surge’ was such a great metaphor – it invoked a jolting, devestating pulse of energy that was simultaneously momentary and fleeting – a lot of bang for your buck, so to speak.  It reduced a complex military operation to a word (more condensed than the played ‘Desert Storm’ type names), and got the ball rolling for making the escalation happen.

The ‘reboot’ metaphor does other equally interesting things – it isolates the problem in US-Muslim diplomacy as a glitch or virus that can be wiped away with the flip of a switch, it invokes the technology that will be a prime medium for the policy shift (and echoes Obama’s tech cred),  and its inward-focused, almost repentant sound.

The real question is what a properly-operating US foreign policy OS would look like – Obama seems to think there is something inherent that the ‘Muslim world’ should see in the US, and I’m interested to know what his ‘Safety mode’ boot would look like.

Ok, I know I got a little bit too aggressive about defending Bobst-space before – I was mostly writing in jest. Mostly.

What isn’t a joke, or in jest, is the Bobst Study Breakdown – it seems a bunch of folks will be getting down in the library come Thursday night at 8pm, turning the dreary life under the fluorescent lights into a dance party.  Take Back NYU!’s blog points out that the event echoes the 60s Freak-Ins that reclaimed university space for students – I hope the Breakdown signals a start of a new tradition of regular dance parties in our fine red library.

So: this Thursday at 8, remember to take a study break to get down in Bobst.

EDIT: That link I posted earlier broke.  This is most definitely still going down though.

Second EDIT: Check the Twitter.

Bill Thompson just opened a new website designed by Blue State Digital, which also designed Barack Obama’s campaign site.

First of all, I’m increasingly inclined to give my qualified support Thompson for mayor – I don’t know if it was pure election-grandstanding, but it seems like every time he  makes a public announcement of some kind, like his workaround of the MTA fare-hike, it’s generally sensible, effective, and conscious of class dynamics in the city (for instance, as Comptroller he got city pension funds to remove their money from companies that privatise formerly public housing in the city).

But that’s beside the point – I think this will be a test case in how well folks other than Obama can use his organizing model in their campaign strategy.  While I trust that Blue State won’t apply the Obama model whole-cloth, many of the central elements of the Obama campaign revolved around him specifically, and might not translate well into other campaigns.  When someone wins, it always makes their system look better than it probably is, and thevalidity of the organizing model will be need to be tested in a vareity of contexts.

Here are some of the risks I see in adopting the Obama model:

-Looking like an Obama hanger-on: to stick in people’s minds, you need to develop a distinctive personality.  The individualist tendancy in American politics asks that politicians be in a way self-made.  Trying to ride the coattails too overtly undermines credibility and might hurt the campaign.

-Social Media can hurt too: trying to mobilize folks via twitter/Facebook/etc. can become a conspicuous display of a lack of support as well.  Having 50 people on a Facebook group demonstrates weakness in a citywide or statewide campaign.  Thompson should be  sure that embracing new media will build support among his target constituencies before over embracing the technology.

-You need a good story: Obama mobilized a series of glittering generalities based on his personal story.  Thompson needs to develop a central story that reduces to a short-worded theme and three key policy proposals to organize people behind the campaign.  One of the clear differences between Obama and Thompson’s site is the lofty quote Obama put on the top of every page.  Thompson doesn’t have the same type of cred, or story to get people together.

this building is tooooo crowded.

During finals, I’ve noticed a severe rise in space-related frustration among NYU students.  Suddenly, folks rediscovered work ethic, and are taking it out on the NYU library, which remains packed nearly around the clock.

Here’s some recommendations on how to keep the crunch to a minimum.  The real key is to target imposters – you can generally spot the people who only study in the week before finals by their array of coffees and energy drinks (as if getting strung out on caffeine for a week or so could make up for a semester spent with dull amusements instead of thinking), as well as their self-satisfaction with actually being in the library.  While I don’t believe uppers and smugness are  problems in and of themselves, there are other things which are.

I believe you should be removed from the library during finals week IF:

1. You spend more than 5 minutes on any of the following sites: Facebook, Myspace, Juicy Campus, the Huffington Post.

2. You spend more than one hour away from your idle, power hungry laptop (theft of laptop is another potential punishment, instead of expulsion)

3. You use your papers, jacket, backpack, shoes, food or other personal items to take up the space of 2-3 people at a table.  (lighing said items on fire is a secondary option as well)

4. You go out to lunch/dinner but leave a notebook/book/paper at your chair and expect people to reserve space for you.

5. You remain at your laptop, but spend more time talking with your friends about how much work you have to do than actually doing work.

6. You are not a freshman, but this is your first time setting foot in the library since freshman orientation.