Shot Down

During my senior year at Michigan I had the chance to serve on the undergraduate student governing body as a representative of the College of Engineering. I was thrown into a diverse group of students with cultural and political knowledge far greater than my own and we were seen to represent both the student and the local population. I was in way over my head but I think it opened my eyes and I learned a lot. Unfortunately for the student body I think I got more out of it than they did. We were expected to come out with statements of solidarity with student religious groups, and this was during the University's big affirmative action cases so we were coming out with statements about that too and organizing bus loads of people to go down to Detroit to the courts for the case.

This week the undergrad governing body at Tech was also making some big decisions. (Note the all too common irony of religion and gun support) Specifically, they were deciding whether or not to approve a conceal and carry law for students on campus. This would allow students over 21 who have appeared before a probate courts and undergone a background check to legally carry a gun on campus. The student governing body initially put forth a survey to the student body and just over 50% of students opposed the measure.

Though I agree with this verdict, the numbers are worrying. The student representatives are in a tough position where they may feel morally opposed to guns but responsible to their constituency. Personally, I don't think the university is the place for people to be carrying concealed weapons. It is sometimes as much a place for growing to realize your personal responsibilities as it is for gaining new book knowledge and skills. Allowing guns does not help with this. It is difficult enough without introducing 1. the responsibility of owning and carrying a lethal weapon around or 2. the possibly frenetic social experience of thinking your peers may be carrying guns. Not to sound snooty about it but, for the most part, this University is a pretty self contained unit. Although it's in the heart of a city, there is not a lot of intrusion from the periphery. When you walk around you have a pretty good idea of who the students are, who is sketchy, and who should be carrying weapons (the police). And I think compared to most of the City, there are a lot of cops on campus.

Aside for this Tech ruling, I have been seeing a lot in the news around town about guns lately. Chicago's gun ban just got shot down by the Supreme Court. Unofficial Tea Party 'leader', former Alaska governor, and likely future reality TV show participant Sarah Palin is about to give the keynote address at the NRA's national meeting. Also, here is a recent episode of This American Life themed on guns, check it out and let me know what you think about guns.

post script found this table while doing some research for something else. It's about risk perception and ranks them against each other. It includes handguns so I thought I would throw it up here. It's from Slovic, P. 1987 Science. Vol. 236 no. 4799. p.280-285.

MARTA's Yellow Line

Recently a stink has been made about the name given to the MARTA Rail Line formally known as Doraville. The dispute came about from business owners and community members along the northeast line of Asian ethnicity. They were a bit peeved about MARTA labeling the line "The Yellow Line." The yellow distinction was considered racist and MARTA agreed to change the name of the line to gold. This facilitated the use of existing maps while quashing the beef.

This whole dispute made me think, is that really the yellow line? I think that section of town is more Asian than most but is it majority Asian. I created a mp of the MARTA rail system that reflects the composition of the communities surrounding each stop. I looked at proportion of white, black, Latino, and Asian populations from the 2000 census, using all the census tracts within a mile of each stop. This doesn't account for the local business ownership but should give us an idea of which line is yellow or black or white or what have you. It looks like the stops along the gold line have more Asian residents around them than other stops but the majority of people around those stops are of another race (specifically Latino around Doraville and Chamblee). I also looked at populations for only the census tract in which the station fell. The results were similar with fewer Asian proportions at almost every station. At the Lindbergh Station the 1 tract method showed 63% of the population as Latino, while including the surrounding tracts introduced an overwhelming number of white residents.

Secondly, how could the community find a way to embrace this? I have had several conversations with Asian friends who grew up in western countries about who was an egg and who was a banana. Maybe you've talked about twinkies. Tourists in New York, San Francisco, and other cities around the world seek out their Chinatowns for a meal and some souvenirs. DC has a metro stop called Chinatown. At the same time the best examples of those places support a large Asian population that can go about daily shopping activities or find a Majong game. Maybe we should call it La Linea to nod to the Latino populations up there. Still I think formalizing it on documents and websites makes it sting and stirs up the opposition. When it's a colloquial thing like Curry Hill in NYC, does the same opposition present itself? And if it does, at whom is it directed?

I'm interested to hear more of your thoughts on this and on the map. Thanks.

Motor City Blueprint

Right now I am watching a show on PBS called Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City. It is intersesting to me growing up there but there is also a lot of not so subtle analogy comparing the city's history to the need to revision a purpose for the country; a purpose that the makers believe to be investment in infrastructure (namely transit and heavy rail). So it's even cooler than a show that just talks about Detroit. They even mention a volunteer project that I took part in while at Michigan called Blight Busters. And they talk about the reclamation of urban space for agriculture; something unheard of ametroplitan area until now. Definitely check it out and explore the show's site.

The issue of squandered opportunity for rail investment is one that has been on my mind since the day of reckoning for GA with regard to rail a couple of weeks ago. Georgia received ony $750,000 of the $8 billion that the government gave out to states for investment in high speed rail infrastructure. It was a clear sign that the Feds can see how GA is operating and that the state need to get its act together. Here's the dispute between the governor and Representative John Lewis. The fact that $8 billion is a pttance is another issue. A parallel issue on my mind is the cutting of MARTA service (~half the bus service), but I'll get to that later.

If you're interested in more on Detroit check out this post and photos.

Interpretive Inquiry

Yesterday, during my course on advanced planning theory I had the pleasure of relating our in-class discussion to a lyric from Notorious BIG's Juicy. We are in the portion of the course dedicated to epistemology and were discussing the Hermeneutic Circle. Specifically, we were illustrating the concept of idea informing observation by discussing how neo-classical economists tend to observe all actions as guided by rationality (as defined by the discipline). Then we got on to how crime is perceived and how the perspective of the actors tends to influence the interpretation of actions observed. Consider, for example the case of a drug dealer. I used this opportunity to paraphrase Biggy's opening to Juicy in which he dedicates the album to all the people who lived above the building he was hustlin' in front of when he was just tryin' to make some money to feed his daughter. My thoughts drifted from social science philosophy to Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. A fleeting moment of pride in my studies.

New Awesome Randomness

You'd think after a month I'd have something better than this.



But really what could be better. Music video for Dan Deacon's Woof Woof

Holidays

The holiday season has come to a close and now it's back to work, but it was a really good one for us. First we trekked up to Detroit with Mali to stay with my parents for Christmas Day. We took it easy, seeing friends, but not trying to squeeze in too much. Sometimes it feels like we're running around everyday trying to see everyone and everything around Detroit. This time we had plenty of dinners at home and didn't make any trips to Ann Arbor. On Christmas we went out to my aunt and uncle's house for the day. Everyone on my mom's side was there. We exchanged some gifts and tried on other people's gifts. The gift we've used the most since then would have to be our new camera. You can see some of the pictures here, but a close second is the crokpot that my mom let us take home with us. We've been on a tear this week testing new recipes.

The only downer about Christmas Day was the weather. The snow that had been on the ground when we showed up disappeared on Chirstmas when it rained all day. For the day after Christmas we had a family portrait planned but our photographer came down with something. So we moved furniture, brought in some shop lights, got out a tripod and took our own 'pro' photo in the living room. We've been adding new backgrounds via Photoshop ever since. That night we headed to the Toldeo Zoo for their display of lights with a bunch of friends from church.
On the way home we wanted to stop by Akron to see our buddies Dave and Liza, as well as new baby, Ella. They moved to Salt Lake City and we were able to see them over the summer but this was the closest they'd be for awhile so we left Detroit around 5:45am and headed east. We had a nice breakfast and got to spend some relaxing time on their estate. Then we piled in the car for another 12 hours.


We took Monday to run the necessary errands and to unpack and repack before leaving on Tuesday for San Francisco to meet up with our friends, Paul and Hilary, and then head to Lake Tahoe for New Year's and Hilary's Birthday. Our first night there we had dinner with everyone's parents. The theme of the dinner was around a pizza cookbook I had given Hilary's parents some time ago. Since then it had become a household favorite and a bit of an obsession for Howard. We left for Tahoe the next morning. One of the most valuable lessons we learned on this trip was how to put chains on our tires. By the second day Paul and I had it down.

We had a place rented for the week. It was a timeshare that Paul's cousin owned near the Nevada side of Heavenly Ski Resort. We spent most of our days discovering hikes around South Lake Tahoe. For two days we rented snow shoes and went trekking around lakes and up hill sides in feet of powder. On the last day we got lift tickets and hit the real slopes. Paul and Hilary rented skis and Lauren and I got snowboards. I had never been on a lift or a slope in skis or a snowboard. After some brief lessons with one foot in the binding at the base of the hill we went to the top of the first run. I fell and got up and fell quite a few times. Then we fixed my shoes and went back up to the top of the lift. Lauren tore it up after about 5 years away from it. I never quite go the hang of it but we went down a bunch of blue runs on the mountain and made it up more than 2,000 feet from the base. I was a lot of fun, kind of scary and wholely tiring. I was, at the same time dealing with a pesky cold that had crept up a few days before. By the end of the day I was hopped up on cold medicine, sore and exhausted. My body was completely confused. Now we're home and dealing with snow in GA. I'm still battling the cold, and it's spread into my right eye. Nonetheless, I am excited to try it again.

Wii Bowling

One thing I can count on doing when I go home for the holidays is getting into some Wii Bowling. Nearly anyone who's played a Wii knows this game. It has universal appeal to all age, skill, and experience levels. Plus the game comes with the system, so nearly everyone who owns a Wii owns this game. It used to be that my sister had a Wii that made it over to my mom and dad's place for the holidays, but now I've discovered that they have their own. They love this game.

Today I found this video that makes new use of the Wii Bowling by chopping up screenshots and reassembling them to remake a scene from the Big Lebowski. Enjoy!

warning! strong language

SOF - Bill McKibben

Yesterday I caught this show on the radio. It's an interview with Bill McKibben. He's an author, activist and most recently the head of 350.org. This is an agency that is "dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis--the solutions that science and justice demand." The 350 refers to aiming for atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations of 350ppm.

The radio piece is not heavily focused on faith but touches on the spirit of environmental activism as it relates to humility, and what realignments the movement and society could benefit from. I am probably messing that up so listen for yourself.

Humility

It's a important characteristic to have and one that comes to mind when you think of our lives on the scale of earth and climate. I think it's a good reason to advocate for changes, or rather less (climate) change. In the same vein, this frightening and prophetic advertisement from the ironically named Humble Oil company found in a 1962 issue Life magazine made me think of it.

COP15 - Google Earth Outreach Showcase

Yesterday the COP15 talks were kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark. I took a break from writing papers to follow some links on some of the many sites devoting some time and space to this huge conference. [banner from Grist]

One of the coolest things that I found was a series of tours, demonstrated on Youtube here. It's also a bit funny because you can hear about climate change from Ted Danson. From there you can download some of the demonstrations you watch on Youtube for real interaction within Google Earth, including full IPCC climate scenarios. It's so cool because it easily combines modeled changes with satellite data that portrays information about land use, population and land cover. You can add and remove layers and scroll through time too (not sure how much satellite imagery will change with time). It also puts you directly in contact (with hyperlinks) with organizations and documents that back up or expand on the data. This eventually took me to their Earth Outreach page. They have a number of tools available to help non-profits visualize problems and projects using Google Earth. Below is one that I found pretty cool.


Now I'm thinking about how I can use this in my class next semester. More to follow on this and COP15.