Dowbrigade

When Harvard graduate and budding anthropologist
the Dowbrigade was in desperate need for a "real" job in Peru, way
back in 1981, the want ads were not overflowing with positions for
Cultural Anthropologists, and so we embarked on our long trajectory teaching
the Mother Tongue.

Three years later, by which point we were on the faculty
of the National University of Peru, we realized teaching had become
a
career
and a calling, and that we needed some professional training, not to
mention a Master’s Degree, in the field.  But with limited time
and money, a wife and kid and another one in the oven, we looked around
for a solid but short degree program. On the recommendation of a colleague,
Samson Devera, we found one – the State University of New York flagship
campus in Albany – where a Masters of Science in Education could be
had in one academic year,
plus two summers.

We never regretted that decision, and spent 14 happy
months in an apartment complex near the state capitol.  Albany
seemed agreeably dull, offering few distractions or alternatives to
work. Admittedly, between a full-time job mornings at New York State
Blue Cross Blue Shield preparing
BUP reports (bi-annual user profile) on stone age computers running
the first real spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3, our Master’s program
classes in the afternoons and evenings, and a pregnant wife and 2-year
old at home, we didn’t have much time for partying.  Only now
do we realize what we were missing…..

ALBANY, New York (AP) — The State University of New York at Albany
returned to No. 1 on the list of party schools, while Brigham Young
University kept its
title as top "stone-cold sober" school in an annual survey of American
college life.

The Princeton Review’s report ranked Albany seventh in the use of hard liquor
and marijuana, ninth in beer drinking and first in "students (almost) never
study."

The annual "Best 357 Colleges" survey, conducted since 1992, is based
on responses from more than 110,000 students at campuses around the country.
The review has no affiliation with Princeton University.

It is the ninth time the University at Albany — a state-run school with an undergraduate
enrollment of 12,000 students — has been on the party school list. It was No.
1 in 1998 and No. 14 last year. The University of Colorado at Boulder ranked
No. 1 last year.

As usual, we are the last to learn…

from CNN

Digital device convergence is a happening
field. While we are still waiting for our combo phone, PDA, iPod
and mini-browser, with built-in GPS and wi-fi detector, numerous tempting
new combinations are appearing.

One of the more interesting involves an attempt to
bridge the digital divide separating the wired world from the three-quarters
of the planet which is still off-line. Projected to cost $250,
the device will combine a personal computer, wireless networking, TV,
DVD player, telephone and videophone, according to developer Raj Reddy.

Although the article doesn’t mention power supply, our
extensive experience in the third and fourth worlds suggests this is
as much a key issue as the range of functions. Let us suggest AC and
DC, 70-300 Volts, battery, hand crank or bicycle generator, and maybe
an optional solar setup.

Mr. Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence
and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to unveil at the
end of this year his new project, called the PCtvt, a $250 wirelessly
networked personal computer intended for the four billion people around
the world who live on less than $2,000 a year.

Because his low-cost computer doubles as a TV and a DVD player, Mr. Reddy believes
that he will be able to use it as a vehicle to take computing and communications
to populations that until now have been excluded from the digital world.

from the
New York Times

At least since the first nomadic humans figured
out that by placing certain seeds in the ground at certain times a
year, and then sticking around to wait for the results, they didn’t
have to move around constantly following animal herds, and shortly
thereafter that if they were staying in one place they could build
walls and fortifications to keep other nomadic humans from taking the
fruits of their labor, the history of human civilization has basically
been the efforts of a small minority to get the majority to do things
they wouldn’t otherwise do, like pay taxes and fight against
strangers.

There is nothing intrinsically evil or oppressive
in this tendency. In order to perform all of the complicated and diversified
tasks involved in building a civilization, the efforts of large groups
of people need to be coordinated and directed. It’s just that it seems
inevitable that the group of people giving the orders soon come to
see themselves as inherently superior, deserving of special treatment,
and feel an almost
genetic
drive to accumulate wealth and power to insure the reproductive success
of their offspring. Power corrupts.

Mankind (and the far majority of the emergent elites
who felt they should be directing the groups efforts were male) developed
a wide variety of techniques to convince the majority to accept the
direction of a powerful elite. Fear of pain and physical punishment. Religious
Awe and imposition of the elite as the representatives of the divine,
or as divine themselves. Fear and hatred of culturally distinct groups
of humans. Black magic. Absolutist beaurocracies which adhere to and
enforce fanatical fascist leader-worship. Cults of personality. Invasive
and
ubiquitous
police power. Systematic brainwashing by television. The list goes
on, and includes most of what we euphemistically call "culture".

And then we have democracy. According to its proponents,
although flawed, the closest to perfect form of government yet devised.
Representative Democracy, the variety practiced in the United States,
consists of convincing the majority to follow orders on the theory
that they play an essential role in selecting the individuals who issue
the orders. In order to be selected as order-issuers, the elite must
convince the majority that it is in their own best interest to hand
over decision-making to one particular group of the elite.

The problems start to multiply when we combine this
system with the other cornerstone of modern civilization, market capitalism.
The results of this overlay are quite different in the countries at
the high end of the socioeconomic spectrum than in the rest of the
world.

Imagine the population of the United States as a
spectrum arranged by yearly income. Take the middle 51% of the electorate,
the required majority to support a democratic ruling class, and what
you have is roughly equal to the American middle class. Getting elected
in America, therefore, largely consists of convincing the Middle Class
that your party offers the best chance for them to climb out of the
middle and join the favored Upper Class. No one likes to think about
the possibility of slipping out the other end of the Middle and becoming
part of the Poor, so that goes largely unmentioned in national campaigns. If
the Poor are mentioned at all, it is to court their votes by offering
to convey them instantly to the Middle Class, although this can be
a dangerous strategy since the Poor are notoriously unpredictable and
ungrateful to boot.

This system has been working reasonably well in
the United States for over 200 years, and in fact is largely responsible
for the emergence of the American Empire, the most powerful military,
economic and cultural tsunami the planet has ever seen. We believe
it is reinforced, at least on a subconscious level, by
the realization that every American is consuming roughly 8 times his
or her fair share of the planets resources under the current dispensation,
which causes instinctual fear of anything which might upset the apple
cart.

The panorama is quite different in the majority
of other countries, however. In your average nation outside of
the "Group of 9", the mixture of Democracy and Capitalism is as volatile
as nitro and glycerine. In a country where 60% of the population live
in poverty, the aforementioned 51 % of the electorate ARE ALL POOR.
This makes it much more difficult for the political elite to convince
voters that they, the elite, who are always among the richest few percent
of the population, have the best interests of the poor majority at
heart.

Furthermore, on the rare occasions when the poor
majority do manage to elect leaders who try to improve their lot, which
in addition to being the "right" thing to do may seem to be the best
way to get reelected, the do-gooders are in immediate conflict with
the
economic
elite, who are threatened by any attempts to disrupt or divert the
economic flow currently filling their personal coffers.

A prime example of this phenomena is unfolding right
now in Venezuela. Although previously among the richest nations
in Latin America, with a standard of living approaching post-war Europe,
Venezuela how has 60% of its population in poverty and 30% in abject
poverty, placing the sweet spot of the electorate somewhere between
those two stations. President Hugo Chavez, a military man from relatively
humble origins, seems to be attempting to provide the poor with the
health , education and human services most experts agree are the essentials
of human development. Meanwhile, the economic elite complain that he
is diverting resources (primarily oil income) which are essential to
business development.

We are going to be seeing more and more of this. In
a country with more than 50% poverty, when truly free and open elections
are held, people will keep getting elected who threaten the economic
status quo and the privileges of the economic elite.  This is the
reason that our great country, champion of democracy, is deathly afraid
of establishing it in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia. The nature
of the electorate in these countries is such that they would probably
elect governments which do not see eye-to-eye with the US on a gamut of issues,
and could even upset the fragile global economic distribution system
we have spent the past 50 years so carefully constructing.

The fact that
Venezuela is the world’s 5th largest oil exporter offers a scary insight
to how one relatively small third-world economy can throw a monkey wrench
into the global system, causing an acute rise in oil prices at a time
when the health of the entire emerging world economic order hangs in
the balance.

This is also producing illogical political-economic
alignments, as the world oil markets seem to be pulling for a Chavez
victory in current recall election.  One would think that the world
energy elite would favor the Venezuelan opposition, which includes almost
all of the rich, the business class, and the international investors
pulling for globalization and free trade. However, the feeling seems
to be that if defeated, Chavez would refuse to leave, prompting renewed
violence and possible interruption of the oil flow. Although Chavez is
perhaps the world’s most dangerous anti-Globalization leader in office
at present, his continued reign offers the best chance of avoiding a
disastrous shutdown of one of our closest sources to feed our growing
oil addiction.  Given
the dubious durability of our other dealers in the Middle East and Russia,
the Chavez administration, the natural enemy of the international energy
elite, has become an essential ally. Real Politik in the energy age can
result in strange bedfellows.

Here’s the latest on the recall election from the Reuters,
via the New York Times:

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuelan leftist President
Hugo Chavez on Monday declared victory in a referendum on his rule but
the opposition called the results “a gigantic fraud.”

According to National Electoral Council President Francisco Carrasquero,
Chavez won backing from 58 percent of voters with 94 percent of electoral
rolls counted in the referendum on whether to recall him before his term
ends.