Much Thanks to Wild Boars

Shades of gray pervade
The night; 6:10 dark orange, true orange
Yellow, green, cyan forms
A defining light, shadows vague
She tromps ambitiously in plaid.
Contrails streak, contrails torn
Wispful, coyoteful, adorned
Sunlight, day, the colors fade…

Twisting away lampu-like
As so am I? And so as I,
Begins the day lamp bulb bright.
Bed we’ve emptied, cab arranged
And she romps vividly in plaid.

* italicized words deserve French pronunciation.

The Valiant Turtle Metaphor

October 2003, Non-metrical split couplet

Run little turtle, run for me
Swim little turtle, swim to freedom
And little turtle, when you’re free
Dance little turtle, dance for me.
~the people on the hill

The sand cracks, I take a peek,
Sneak
A whiff of a world I’ll only frequent
A minute.
Sun ringing, crisp air, cool sand tickling my nose—I tremble
Like a finger without thimble,
Exposed. I struggle forth, amazed with the beauty, the birds.
An urge
Overtakes me to slip from the shore. Oh, look! Not far,
There are
A whole lot of me budding and shuffling toward the sea.
The low frequency
In the wind spins whirlwinds, the colors are so bright.
So different than last night.
I inhale, my palate explodes, the scent of seaweed
Sweet,
So neat, there are no roads! A gust upon my face
Gracefully
Unfolds an air lift with a twist,
Brisk
As gold. It’s a great day for a dip, I’ll explore
Offshore,
As a form crosses the sun and circles once more—a goodfella,
Hello.
Wow! So quick, oh, he’s dive-bombing now.
I look around.
And why are those people up on the hill yelling,
Arms waving,
As if they’re suggesting I move?

Oh, God! He just ate one of me! Yellow mouth vice
Not nice—
Bad. Oh, jeez, six or eight out of one-twenty, reduced
By two,
Four, sixty, two—a handful. What luck,
Stuck Here,
I survived the selection. I survived the waves.
Now droves
Of jackals, wild pigs—insane. This is quite rare,
Where
Is my mom? I’ll take refuge in this rusty can.
Oh man,
Not for long. I must drag myself to the sea. Go fast.
At last,
A foot less, I’m so slow. No, fast, I will go
Straight as the crow,
Eyes! He pecked out one of me’s eyes! Oh dear,
So near
Keep plugging just twenty-five more years.
Tears,
They’re blocking my view. No accumulated salt
Yet, just the thought
Of the blue. Now quick, flip by flip, gosh, I’m so slow.
Flowing
Trickles of aid wrap soft like a handkerchief
On my ankle.
And why are those people still up there,
Dumb stares,
I could’ve used a little help you know!

Ahh, it seems my sight has improved.
I’m moved
By the undertow, swirled and shoed.
Glued
To a worry in the back of my mind, yellow beaks,
Tusks, cheeks
Munching the orange-peel soft carapace
Inside.
Snazzy, if I move my flipper like this, I glide.
No need for a guide,
I’m quite alive. Whoops, by surprise I’m tossed
Lost,
The sun, obstructed again, casts a long
Shadow and is gone.
What’s that figure? It grows. A big fish,
No, a shark!
Not this again. Go! Paddle fast as a galley
Two, three
Gunpowder’s incentive if you ask me,
Free
At home, yikes, what’s this? SWISH…

Ha hah, missed!
Look mom, I can survive on
My own.
As I come up for air, their cheers blare
Social welfare,
Jeers and suggestions of what I should know,
So,
I yell back, I’m not impaired!
Aware
However, that I am little and my culture is different… they probably don’t
understand.

Little Friedrich & Uncle Sam

Take 3

When I was a kid I had a few questions
Like how to walk and how to kick
Was I conceived in liberty?
What’s the use of knowledge in society?

At first I queried then I poked
Amazed and leary, brimmed and stoked
Then Uncle Sam took my hand
And said, “You’re looking stellar you mild Fabian.”

While he justified his grip
I pulled away and ran from him
To the Privatseminar and on
To some coffee house, here’s what I saw:

People communicating
The universe, the kosmos mating
An organic compound of benzol rings
The lattice of a crystal’s strings

I saw order
Spontaneous order
Hey Sam, get your visible hand off me.

I gasped aloud yet Sam grabbed my arm
And insisted that I don’t be alarmed
He said there could be competition
He said he calculated with precision

“There’s no taxis in these galaxies
The wind carries us quite happily,”
I said, “No Sam, competition is a discovery procedure!”

He did not understand. Of course
I tried to explain, however, verbose.
The double negative, after all
Has yet to be banned by federal law.

With a firm hand on my shoulder
Sam showed me his campaign hats and price controls
He offered to subsidize my thoughts
As I pulled a way again, he looked shocked

I want order
Spontaneous order
Hey Sam, get your visible hand off me.

I ran, I fled his crooked stare
Until I stumbled upon Ms. Lacy Faire
As fine a form as one need see
To be free to choose, and choose to be free

Lacy and I chose to get together
With a few good ideas and a few good friends.
Amongst us all and amongst us some
She’s who embraces our decisions.

As Sam carried on down the road to serfdom
I found myself in Switzerland
Between the firm, the market and the law
On the shores of Lake Geneva, here’s what I saw

People communicating
The universe, the kosmos mating
An organic compound of benzol rings
The lattice of a crystal’s strings

I saw order
Spontaneous order
Hey Sam, get your visible hand off me

Casual Tunes (Lauren’s Closet Poem)

Paths cross on the lawn, under tree, in the shade
With no path yet past fascinates and arranges the day.
A pair of swimsuits, a handfull of notions
Like geysers in showrooms or spoken explosions
To once again soak me
And you.

Tucked in an enclave, a pocket of sun
From short stories to a contraption that clunks
After the Fairmont the rain fell in lumps
Until the shelter of the Rep and a tale called ‘True Love’
That you asked that I read
To you

I won’t define well defined casual tunes
For the songs that I sing are the songs that grow old
Though the tales that I tell are the tales that I’ll tell
Again and again and again

Hidden in few - two tents, cookware and steed
Seeds, flower books mesmerize, marvel and feed
Your quaint mind mapping ‘tography photons with reeds
On your fingers whom dance on a stringed hollow-shaped tree
That once sung for me
I remember

Propriety and Developing Countries

At one point they were referred to as the "third world."  As some considered this disrespectful, "developing countries" was suggested (though aren’t all countries developing?  and isn’t the problem just that, the countries being referred to are not developing?).  Some believe LDC (Least Developed Countries) is the new respectful standard.  Others equate such a metric to the "fourth world."  Doesn’t seem we’re moving forward here…

In Pursuit of Florida Parrot T-Shirts

Pietra Rivoli‘s Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is an excellent biography of an unexpected protagonist: her Florida Parrot T-Shirt. From analyzing the institution of slavery as a cotton subsidy to looking at the US used clothing market in East Africa, Rivoli takes a tastefully empirical look at what has led the cotton industry to thrive and exist as it does today.  NPR has even done a three-part audio series inspired by the book.

I think most commendable to her analysis is how she has mentioned that in all of her travels, and in all of her interviews, she did not meet a single bad person.  It suggests the solution to the many conflicts that arise out of all countries cotton subsidies must be much deeper than the everyday people making decisions about what and what not to purchase.

While the book does not offer any solutions to the many dilemmas faced in the global textile trade, it adds a remarkable amount of depth to an often two-dimensional debate.  Rivoli has mentioned one thing she sees as possibly hopeful for removing these engrained cotton handouts is an increase in non market distorting subsidies.  She defined these subsidies as when you pay people to go sit on the beach rather than pay them to produce an excess supply of something that will drive prices down.

While I would guess the idea of a non market distorting subsidy may be contested, it does raise an interesting question.  Ten years from now, might it be easier to push for the end to cotton subsidies if all of the cotton growers are working hard in their feilds, or if they are all off enjoying the beach?

On related issues, Russel Roberts writes on the peculiar relationship between Chinise textile quotas and the WTO.

Birds Eye Lesson in Land Reform

This is an impressive visual of the tragedy of the commons.  The interactive satellite photo compares  communal farmland to private farmland in Zimbabwe over the period of its land redistribution.  It’s significant to note is that this land reform only began around 2000, a few years ago.

And What is Even Worse

"Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: video games were invented and popularized before books."

In his book Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson raises many good questions about the way we perceive popular culture and emphasizes just how much more complex our passive existence would be today compared to just 50 years ago.  i.e. Pong never involved outsourcing to China.

For our next thought experiment, try to imagine an alternate world where the corporation was invented and popularized as an icon of tradition and nostalgia before the mom and pop shop.  What would your parents think!?

Car Service and Grammar

Without excessive qualifications, I would like to state that I am a big fan of open borders.  I am also a big fan of grammatical errors (if we would be so harsh to call them by such a derogatory label).

That said, I recently had a general maintenance check up done to my car.  I received this letter in the mail shortly after.

It starts in a very collegiate manner, "Dear Parizek,"  and resolves with my advisor looking forward to "better serve [me] vehicle in the future."  I am particularly fond of the northeastern slant to the entire work and the general disregard for any margins.

The service was excellent.

A Bundle of Instincts

"It was (and is) common to think that other animals are ruled by "instinct" whereas humans lost their instincts and are ruled by "reason", and that this is why we are so much more flexibly intelligent than other animals. William James took the opposite view. He argued that human behavior is more flexibly intelligent than that of other animals because we have more instincts than they do, not fewer."

Leda Cosmides & John Tooby offer more here: Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer.

Arlington Decency

Arlington County is not one for much decency.  For example, everyone in Arlington is required to have a safety inspection every year and place an ugly, half-crooked sticker in the middle of their front windshield to prove they have done so.  Apparently, they promptly come sneaking around the day that these stickers expire to issue tickets.

I have been here for a month.  I found a nice place and, ever since I moved in, I have been parking in a spot right in front of my house along the street.  This is why it surprised me when I woke up this past week with a parking ticket on my car.

Confused, I looked to confirm that there weren’t any “No Parking” signs that had gone unnoticed, but my memories of a sign-free street were untrue.  My parking spot sat cowering in the wake of a spotless, new “No Parking” sign.  Funny.  The base of the signpost even exhibited freshly turned dirt and city project markings.  The pictures may help you visualize the “funniness” of this moment.

My favorite part is that on the back of the sign, the date and time at which it was installed are sharpied on.  The day was the same day that I received my ticket, twelve hours prior.

And so, unsuspectingly, as I returned from a pleasant day at work and an enjoyable evening of swing dancing, and forgot to check for new parking regulations posted in the spot where I had been parking for over a month straight, I had signed up for trouble.

Ill let you know how my modest contention letter fares.  I admit my illegality and ask for the simple decency of information before unnecessary monetary punishment.  Even the San Jose State bicycle dictators have been courteous enough to place a warning on students bicycles before blindly ticketing them for laws that came into effect within the last 12 hours of the day. 

On a more subtle note of how SJSU bike laws are like the US foreign policy with Cuba, I can defer you to one of my many unpublished letters to the editor.

Cognitive Knowledge Networks & Local Know-How

"It’s not who you know, it’s what who you know knows."  Or so suggest cognitive knowledge networks.  Noshir Contractor can tell you all about it.  Rob Curley can tell you all about who knows who knows in Lawrence, Kansas.

This adds a lot of challenges to the veracity involved in traditional borders, both in space and mind.  Watch these networks appear at CommonCensus, who is letting you map where you think you live, or marumushi, who is mapping social networks in flickr.

A crash course on spontaneous order may be appropriate for those kindergarten classes soon.

House Plan: Folding Shirts

Throw this one in the blueprints.  I am definitely folding my shirts this way from this day forward.  (Slow-mo recommended.)

Hopping New Year

Good day and happy New Year!  I hope for you, at least; I missed it this year.

In fact, my whole trip went well besides that little glitch, of which I have now become quite proud.  Upon leaving California the Tuesday after Christmas, the rain stopped.  I had arranged Jack (my car, in the spirit of Kerouac) into the ultimate travel machine.  I laid the back seats flat dividing the hatchback into two parts: 1) a row of boxes, topped with the essentials and 2) two pieces of egg-crate style foam bedding decorated just as you would a bed, in a little less space.  Conveniently, my passenger seat also folds flat, so I could comfortably pull into any rest-area type space and snuggle under the warmest of comforters for a good night (or mid-day) sleep.

I enjoyed the sunrises of Flagstaff, Arizona; Santa Fe, New Mexico and the grasslands of western Oklahoma.  On the flipside I enjoyed the sunsets of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee.  Georgia OKeeffe’s New Mexico is the autumn of landscapes.  While perhaps I like the grasslands for the same reason that Andy Warhol likes mechanized art: its very repetitive, but there are so many imperfections.  In Nashville, I caught the Grand Ol’ Opry, the staple of live radio shows for your bluegrass and country diet.  And, having had such a pleasant evening, I decided to wrap up my New Years celebration right there at 9:00pm.  I hit the road.  As I had been stopping at internet cafes and surfing Craigslist, scheduling house visits for potential places to rent upon my arrival in Virginia on New Years day, I still had a long road ahead of me.

Around 11:45pm is when it hit me.  I believe its called teleportation.  I was trying to decide on the best way to start violently honking my horn and flashing my headlights at the nearest car on the desolate highway without provoking that person into a road-rage-like response (to share the celebration of the New Year, of course).  But then I saw a sign.  Not just any sign, but a street sign.  It read: Crossing into the Eastern Standard Time Zone.  Poof.  12:45am.

By any means I arrived safely in Virginia.  Within a half-hour I had a room and after a few trips to IKEA (I finally understand), I am happily situated in Arlington.  Take a look. I live right near that little red arrow.  I work down at the green one.

And that gets you close to up to date.  I haven’t told you about how much I enjoy the details of work, or why.  Nor have I told you much about the place I live and my mysterious and pleasant roommates.  Those will be stories for another time.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #9

Summary of Concerns About Current ‘Fair Trade’

The ‘fair trade’ movement is full of people that care about local communities and the global village.  It is also full of good intentions.  What concerns me is that intentions don’t always heed their desired result.

Currently, I am displeased with how much these principles of ‘fair trade’ favor special interests and hurt small businesses and low-income buyers.

These principles assume human nature is different if you are a producer or a buyer or a worker; yet often the workers, producers and buyers are the same people.  These current principles of ‘fair trade’ treat people like they change personalities throughout the day.  The public is considered accountable yet a worker is considered incompetent to look after herself.  If someone favors sustainable development and good working conditions they are assumed less likely to grant privileges to special interests.  If someone is a producer they are more likely to need assistance than a buyer.  And if someone is a worker (regardless of what they do because they should be provided a job) they have more rights than the person providing them work and all of the buyers who are just trying to make a living purchase.

After it is established that the same people behave differently and have different rights at different times of the day, all of the industries they work in, the products they create and trade relationships they form are considered to be homogenous.  It is then proposed that all of these relationships will function best if we are to constrict the diversity of their nature to a few chosen relationships.

It is very important that we revise the principles of the current ‘fair trade’ movement and make them more sound.  At the moment, they are a mess of contradictory claims that don’t even support the ends we are fighting for.