Ramblings of an African geek

Moving on: A goodbye letter to Blogger

2006-10-19T07:35:00.000-04:00

I've had this blog for almost two years now and in general I can say that it has been good to me. It has also not changed very much in that time. Uncharacteristically for google, they have failed to pay attention to improvements in blogging design that have been made since the days when this place used to be the best there was. Even the recent attempts with blogger beta still aren't up there yet in terms of features, though they do seem to have some cool ideas.

Well, I have been paying attention and I think the time has come to move on to better things. Now, the plan isto eventually get my own webspace where I can host my own blog and do anything to it I want. Until then though, I'm moving this place down the street to wordpress which is far more customizable and has cooler features.

Hence, the new address is: ghanageek.wordpress.com

Hope to see you there

The portable writing surface

2006-09-27T10:50:00.000-04:00

Remember I mentioned my new mobile writing device? Well here she is.

Pretty isn't she? Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Wakanda, A HP Pavillion dv2000z carrying

A 1.6 Ghz AMD Turion x2
1 Gig of Ram
80 GB hard drive
intergrated Geforce 6150 graphics
Integrated webcam and mic
14.1 inch widescreen monitor @ 1280x800

Not the most powerful system on the planet, but definitely loaded with enough power for my writing, coding and game playing needs. Right now she's running Windows XP Home(very occasionally) and Kubuntu Edgy(where this post is being typed)

I'll talk more about issues I have with linux, especially in Ghana, later.

She's still being configured though. I don't yet have all the software I want installed on either platform, though the linux box is much further along.

Speaking of configuration, if anyone has wallpapers of the following, I'd love to get my hands on a copy

1. Anything Milestone Comics related, but especilly Static and Hardware
2. Black Panther. She is called Wakanda after all
3. Anything Martial Arts related

Otherwise, this is how I'll be typing most of my posts to you now. Lets hope she holds up as well as she looks

Back to play

2006-09-18T13:56:00.000-04:00

Hey people. I guess I've been gone for a while. Sorry about that. I have gotten pointed reminders from several people that my posts were missed. Well, I'm back to regular writing now. About time too. I honestly have missed this a lot.

Luckily I now have my own writing hardware outside of work (more on that later) so I write my posts at home and put them up when I get online later. This should mean I'm back to regular posting. Barring internet issues (more on that too) or things of that nature.

I have been thinking about content in my time off, in case you were wondering. The tone of the blog will probablybe changing slightly. Mostly because I'll be expanding my range of topics by quite a bit. I figure since this is my space then I get to pick what I talk about here. Hence, a lot more science fiction and comic book talk, a lot of stuff on Ghana and Africa in general, a lot of work related posts (science, linux, programming mostly), some martial arts and the regular personal development/human observation stuff you've come to know and love.

Obviously there will be some overlap in all of this. I hope that the stuff that comes out of my head/fingers will be of interest to all of you. Either way I'll still be here. And you're still welcome

And the wheel continues to turn

2006-08-10T13:42:00.000-04:00

In the space of three days last weekend I gained a cousin, lost an uncle and saw my father turn 60.

My mother's younger brother died on friday night of cancer. A couple of months ago he fell off a chair and fractured his leg. When it refused to heal he went in for tests and found out that there was cancer in the bone. When they took him in for an MRI they found masses in his leg, his lungs and his brain. From then on it was all pretty much downhill. And pretty fast too.

As of my World Cup post he was lying in bed doped up on painkillers, but still lucid. A couple of weeks later he could barely put together legible sentences and couldn't remember some people. He spent the last two weeks of his life in the hospitol being watched over by his family and slowly slipping away. By the end I was just hoping he wouldn't have to be so helpless or in so much pain anymore.

Last Thursday his younger brother had his second chld. A boy. He gets named today. On friday he passed away. Friday was also my father's 60th birthday.

Not quite the day any of us wanted. At this point I just take comfort in the fact that he isn't in pain anymore. It hurts to see my mother broken up though. Things have been bad enough for her as it is recently. I'm just hoping we're done with the bad news for now.

Spend all the time you can with those you love people. You don't know when or how you'll see them again

They could use some cash

2006-08-01T15:16:00.000-04:00

My fellow hybridized African brethren Uchenna and Denis are in the process of trying to make their dream come true by writing, producing and directing a movie in Nigeria. Sadly they are out of cash and not done yet so I'm lending my support to the drive.

Anyone who feels like being generous can send cash by paypal to takestyle@hotmail.com. Otherwise you can leave a comment and we can work out alternate arrangements.

This is not bogus people. I wouldn't ask except these two are trying to do something great and it needs a chance to grow. Don't take my word for it. Check out their blogs and see what they have to say for themselves. Besides, how often will you get to say you legitimately sent money to Nigeria (Just jokes my naija people. Please don't kill me)

PS. There's a backlog of posts I need to get up. More coming soon

I believe I promised some overdue pictures

2006-07-01T12:15:00.000-04:00

These are mostly of from the day of the Ghana - USA game. I'm sure you'll have no problem telling which are before and which are after.

I'd talk about the games now, but I'm hungry and about to head home for some of that great home cooking. Plus monday is a holiday. Well, technically today is, but its been pushed up to monday. Therefore those of you who absolutely can't wait to hear what I think will unfortunately have to wait a little while. In the meantime though, enjoy

sidenote: apologies to those on dialup. I assure you that *I* think its worth the wait

I now have a contract

2006-06-25T08:52:00.000-04:00

The job has officially signed me up for the duration of my stay. And, to be perfectly honest, they are overpaying me. I'd do the job for the cost of bus fare, which would be nothing since I usually ride with my father. Still, the money is nice and it does provide some additional incentive to deliver.

As far as what I'll be doing, my primary responsibilities are to the fledgling High Performance Computing department and to the AITI-KACE blog, which I am writing.

As far as the blog goes, I have been given contractual permission to 'freely and joyously speak the truth'
Now, anyone who has ever heard me speak about journalism and the responsibilities of those who have a voice and an audience (think Jon Stewart on Crossfire or any other place he has spoken about the press) might have an idea of where this might occasionally lead to. Much like Bomani, I'm wondering how long it'll take until they figure out what they just did.

Either way, this is shaping up to be a fun ride.

Oh, expect my comments on Ghana, Brazil and the USA tomorrow. With pictures.

You know I had to talk about this: Ghana 2 Czech Republic 0

2006-06-19T10:15:00.000-04:00

Saturday was a tense day for most Ghanaians. We had already lost to Italy after playing particularly well except for a couple of defensive blunders and inability to convert our chances in front of the Italian Goal. we'd also seen the Czechs dismantle the Americans. Therefore we knew the chances of our surviving the game were minimum. Nonetheless, our country was playing Whatever happened they would have our support for the entire game. The streets were bare and everyone who didn't have to be out (as well as a lot of people who did) were in front of a TV.

And then two minutes into the game we scored. And outplayed the Czechs completely. And scored again.........

I don't think I can adequately explain to you what that was like. This is Ghana. Everyone watches football. We all played at some point in our childhoods. The world cup causes a dramatic dip in productivity every four years as everything gets dropped in favour of the beautiful game. And despite our supremely impressive record at the African Cup(4 time winners) and in the Under 17 World Cup (2 time winners) we have never made it to the big show.

When it comes to the World Cup, Ghana is like that supremely talented kid with massive amounts of potential who just never lives up to the promise that everyone can see. Teams more talented than this one (most notably the Abedi Pele/Tony Yeboah lead team of the mid 90's) have fallen apart over internal conflicts or discipline issues and failed to perform. Except this year we finally made it.

I will confess to mixed feelings about our qualification. Year after year I'd placed my hope in the Black Stars only to see them fail over something idiotically mundane. Finally they seemed to maybe have it together. Still, experience had taught me and legions of Ghanaians to bury our hope deep and remain cautiously optimistic at best in case the team disappointed us again. When we lost to the Italians, we were proud of how well we played, but still steeling ourselves for the disappointment of a second loss to the Czechs. And then the team pulled together and showed us flashes of the kind of brilliance that led us to knock out Brazil in the U-17 World cup and all of a sudden what every one of us, cynics included, had been hoping for happened.

The partying was insane. Everyone went out and enjoyed the win we'd been waiting decades for. Since then there's been an explosion in the sales of flags, jerseys and other national paraphanelia, which were doing well to begin with. For the final group game against the USA the entire country will be a sea of red, yellow green and black. Win or lose it'll be beautiful.

Speaking of the USA, I've been hearing disturbing rumors that your amusingly named coach was claiming that the three points against us were guaranteed. Plus apparently your soccer pundits spent all of the last week talking about how were were an unorganized, unskilled team which would roll over with 4-5 goals. Guess what, our players heard it too. I would boast or make threats but as a wise old man of my acquaintance says, football is not played with the mouth. We'll see you Thursday.

Pushing hands (video)

2006-06-05T09:39:00.000-04:00

I thought the martial arts enthusiasts who read this might enjoy this video. Its me competing in push hands at a kung fu tournament in Ohio about three years ago. I'm the smaller of the two people in the video.

For that particular tournament the push hands division had no experience limits and I was 2 pounds above the cutoff for the heavyweight class. Which meant that I was the lightest and least experienced competitor in my division. I think I did ok, it could have been better though.

Anyway, one of my training buddies sent me the link and I thought it might make for interesting viewing.

For those of you wondering what push hands is, in its noncompetitive form it is a training tool used in the Chinese internal martial arts, most famously tai chi, to teach sensitivity to force being applied by your opponent and weaknesses in their structure. In its competitive form you use this sensitivity to manipulate your opponent outside of a marked area, usually a circle, for points.

That's how I was taught to think about it anyway. People might disagree.

Comments are welcome by all.

Edit: looks like whoever put up the video took it down.
I'll see if I can get a copy

Interesting turn of events

2006-05-27T09:16:00.000-04:00

I have an internship.

I didn't want to spend my time at home just sitting around. That tends to go badly for me. The greatest personal growth I have gonet hrough has usually come when I'm working hard at things I like. Why mess with a proven strategy?

So... I now work here. And I can happily say that I haven't been around this much Ghanaian geekery since secondary school. Did I mention they have a cluster that I get to play with? The irony is that I came home partly to relax and not work as hard. And here I am pulling 10-12 hour days again. At least its fun.

note to Pam: This explains why I personally am behind in my PrepTime Posse postings. One is coming though.

This post is about Chocolate

2006-05-16T12:53:00.000-04:00

I suppose there are more important things I could be talking about, but one of the things I missed most about being away was the food, so expect me to just talk about that at times.

For those of you who are unaware, Ghana is one of the world's leading exporters of cocoa, the stuff that makes chocolate. Its how thousands of Ghanaians make a living, including my grandmother for a chunk of her life. Hence in addition to just liking the way it tastes, I feel sort of a special connection to Ghanaian chocolate.

This is what I grew up eating, Golden Tree chocolate.

It comes in milk chocolate

Dark chocolate

Lemon

Orange

and Coffee flavors

as well as pure cocoa powder

This stuff has no additives. Its great. Think really dark chocolate in a mug

(sidenote: apologies for the poor pictures. I'm on dialup these days sadly. I'll probably go over to an internet cafe with broadband to load the other pictures I am taking)

Anyway, turns out I 'accidentally' opened one of the bars

Now I guess I have to eat it all. Life is hard sometimes

Comments

2006-05-10T10:19:00.000-04:00

I'm switching back to blogger's comments system. It does everything I need now and the move saves me from having to switch back and forth between Blogger and Haloscan's sites to moderate them. In case enyone os bothered about all the comments being reset to zero, that is why.

I still have your old comments archived though

Sidenote: In the process though I noticed a couple of interesting messages I never got around to replying to. In between the Ghana posts I'll try to add in a few of those.

I'm Home!

2006-05-10T08:31:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, your favourite Ghanaian (or at least one of them) is back home now. And by home I do mean Ghana. (basic info here for those of you who may be unaware of the country)

To head off the question, its not permanent. Its for a couple of months. I'm taking a long needed break from academia to return to the land of hot weather, pretty women, interesting politics and crazy drivers.

Its great being back so far. A lot has changed and yet a lot hasn't. Sometimes what I see fills me with hope about our future and sometimes it makes me grit my teeth in frustration.

Thankfully though, I have a camera and a keyboard, and I’m arrogant enough to believe that people will be interested in what I do with them. Therefore you guys get to go on at least part of this journey with me. Having grown up here and yet having been away for so long means that I’m in an interesting position where its all familiar and yet slightly alien at the same time.

I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I will.

(PS. I’ll still be writing for Prep Time Posse though. Whole continents cannot contain the geekery!)

Here we go again (race and scifi part ???)

2006-03-27T01:59:00.000-05:00

Thanks to this post from Nalo I just found a comment on my Octavia Butler obituary that I must have missed the first time. I guess that's what happens when I get lazy and start occasionally skipping my daily blog reading.

Since that quote was attributed to Nalo, she went ahead and answered it here and covered the topic pretty well. I still felt the need to address it though. I guess something in my ego just keeps me from just letting this slide.

Of course, the really amusing thing about that blog entry is how generic it was. Generally speaking, as Pam noted, there seems to be a generic white response to these kinds of complaints about genre writing. Namely, the assumption that any mention of the whitewashed nature of the genre most imply some sort of automatic dislike of white people. Usually this is just followed by some kind of MLK-lite suggestion that we judge the writers by the content of their works instead of the color of their skin. I have seen it over and over again in discussions of race and science fiction and comics. At this point I can pretty much see them coming.

What is really amusing about these statements is that they tend to reveal how little critical thought the person making them has really put into the issue.

Why do I say this? Simple. How exactly would a black person who hated white people get into a whitewashed genre to begin with? Who would they be reading?

Personally, I've been a science fiction fan for the better part of two decades. I already made a post about the books that most influenced me as a child. Long before I'd ever heard of Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Steven Barnes, Nalo Hopkinson etc. I was reading Asimov, Heinlen, Ben Bova, Andre Norton, John Brunner.... Obviously I have absolutely no idea what it means to relate to someone who does not look like me. Ok, bad sarcasm aside, the truth is that every genre fan of color must by definition be able to relate to people who are different from them. There is no other way to get into the genre. There just aren't that many non-white people in it. The chances of there existing a black science fiction fan who has only read black authors and/or characters is so small I'd rather lay odds on that snowball in hell first. On the other hand, it would be remarkably easy to find white fans who have almost never read a science fiction book which didn't have a white writer and/or character.

Hell, as far as I know there isn't a stigma against putting white faces on a book because they might not sell as well. Which makes it remarkably interesting that the question being asked is why people who have to make a special effort to *not* read a genre story which requires them to identify with someone who doesn't look like them are prejudiced. If anything, the question should be reversed.

Why is it that putting a black face on the cover of a book is automatically a bad thing?

Why are non-white authors such a rare thing?

Where are the non-white fans?

What keeps them out of a supposedly universal genre?

And why is it that those who do exist tend to cluster into their own communities?

What is the cause of this defensiveness that shows up chiefly among white fans whenever the racial makeup of the genre is discussed?

Like I said, that piece displayed an all too common lack of critical thinking about the issue. I understand its probably due to long standing unquestioned assumptions that people are not even aware they hold. Still, since cornute was kind enough to ask.....

The "David Chappelle's Block Party" playlist

2006-03-12T20:02:00.000-05:00

I finally saw "David Chappelle's Block Party" last weekend in my brother over the weekend. Personally I think its brilliant. There have been a couple of comparisons to 'Wattstax' in a some of the reviews I have read so far. To me they are more than apt. This is by far the closest thing I've seen to that movie ever. I'd review it, but far smarter and more eloquent people have already done that in several places online. My favourite so far is the Boston Globe review. I am simply going to talk about the music.

Now if you are one of those people who has made up their minds to treat all hip-hop music as violent, angry, nihlistic, misogynistic musoc with little if anyredeeming social value then you will not get what made the music so great. If you aren't, you might have heard of some of the people who played, or at least you should have. That concert basically got together some of the best musicians alive today. People whose music has kept me company for literally thousands of hours over the last decade or so. At the very least you might want to open up your minds and grab the soundtrack when it hits. I know I will.

Otherwise, these are the albums that I have been inspired to play this week.

The Roots: Things Fall Apart, Phrenology and The Tipping Point
Mos Def: Black on Both Sides
Takib Kweli: Train of Thought, Quality
Black Star: Black Star
Common: Like Water for Chocolate
Kanye West: The College Dropout
The Fugees: The Score
Dead Prez: Lets Get Free
Erykah Badu: Mama's Gun
Jill Scott: Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds, Vol. 1

Sidenote: While I'd personally love to see this movie get some Oscar recognition in the documentary category, I'll wager a small amount of money that it'll never happen.

Either way, good listening.

Universal Black Constant #1

2006-03-08T20:53:00.000-05:00

I kind of wondered into this post topic by accident while writing about Eric Jerome Dickey's new 'Storm' comic book. One of the things I found interesting about it was the fact that he showed the animosity that sometimes tends to exist between Africans and black Americans. At the same time I've been thinking about a post on the genius of the boondocks character 'Uncle Ruckus'. What they both have in common is what I tend to refer to Universal Black Constant #1. Namely black people don't like black people

The most damaging legacy of slavery and colonization is , in my opinion, the widespread inferiority complex it left across all of those affected. The truth is that most black people, regardless of where they are born, have to deal with the message that the very fact of their birth makes them less than everyone else, but especially white people, from the day they learn how to communicate. Maybe a little after if they are lucky.

Africans and West Indians have the advantage of only being stuck with each other, which means that we are required to acknowledge each other's competence to a degree that isn't necessary here. Its still there though. Just about every African I know can tell you stories of Ruckus style comments made by other Africans. Most notably a wish for a return to colonial rule because the Europeans ran the continent better.

Now consider the fact that human beings have a natural tendency to place themselves in a hierarchy and consider what happens to those who know from day 1 that they are assigned the bottom rung. A struggle to stratify the bottom rung begins with everyone trying to be on small of that little space so at least they are better than someone. Hence all of the above reasons are amplified by the need to put down the other group in order to feel a little better about yourself and your group. Not the smartest solution known to man, but definitely understandable. And that right there is a vast majority of the reason different groups of black people stay at each other's throats.

The genius of Uncle Ruckus, in my opinion, is the fact that he brings light to the thoughts that lie buried in the minds of a lot of people, black and non black, tend to carry around with them and avoid talking about. I think there's a lot to be gained by actively admitting to and confronting the mindset instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

We just lost a Giant.........

2006-02-27T01:21:00.000-05:00

Octavia Butler died on Saturday. I found out maybe an hour ago.

I'm looking for words to describe how this makes me feel but I keep coming up short. Better writers that me will have to deal with that.

Here's what I will say. Like a lot of black science fiction fans I came across her work at a time when I was growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of people who looked like me in a medium I enjoyed so much. As such she wasn't just a great writer to me. She, and writers like her are symbols of the fact that the subtle limitations that the world tries to place on who I can be and what I can do with my life are illusions. For that I will forever be grateful.

Rest In Peace Miss Butler. You will be missed

Some things of interest

2006-01-25T11:29:00.000-05:00

My first Prep Time Posse piece is up. In true Die Whitey warrior tradition (yes Pam, I'm stealing that from you) I talk about marvel's new family of black Captain Americas and how much they irritate certain fans. Enjoy

Pam also sent me this link which covers a lot of the frustration I feel whenever I hear people talk about the continenent: How to write about Africa

Found it: Commentary on Steven Barnes' "Lion's Blood"

2006-01-22T14:14:00.000-05:00

This was the last commentary essay I wrote on black science fiction in college. I posted the others up earlier but couldn't find a copy of this one.

Luckily one of the advantages of liking to play around with linux distros as a hobby is the fact that I change and reinstall operating systems a lot. Which also means I try to keep backups of all my important stuff. Of course, I have to find them first, which was the cause of the original delay.

anyway, without further ado, here it is

With “Lion's Blood”, Steven Barnes attempted to write an alternate history of alternate history of America that raises a lot of incredibly interesting questions. In his alternate world, Africans conquer Rome and are the ones who find America. Since they have all that land and require manpower to farm it, they begin to capture slaves from various parts of Europe. The central characters in this story are Kai, the son of a plantation owner and Aidan, a celtic slave who becomes Kai's best friend. Using both of their perspectives. We are shown a view of slavery as it would have looked had it happened to white people. That premise alone makes this book worth reading. The way Barnes chooses to handle that premise only serves to make the book a more interesting read. It is definitely very disturbing in parts and there are creative decisions he took in constructing his history that I am not necessarily a huge fan of. I am also not especially happy with some of his decisions regarding Kai's character. All of that aside, this is still a good read and a book which should be recommended to any white person claiming slavery was benign or a good thing for black people since Barnes pulls very few punches, especially in the earlier sections of the book.

It is going to be hard for me to discuss themes in this book, not because it isn't full of them but because my reaction to it left me with more than enough questions and issues with the book that, in this case, I thought taking a closer look at the reaction it caused in me might be more interesting. There are several things about the book I find worthy of comment. First is Barnes' description of the middle passage and slavery through Aidan's eyes, a section of the book I think a lot people need to read. Second is his choice of Islam as the religion most of the Africans adopted and some of the interesting turns he takes in exploring religion. There is also his portrayal of Kai and his father as almost benign slave masters in certain places, which I find myself not entirely comfortable with.

The book opens up with a look at Aidan's life in a little village learning how to be a fisherman from his father. We are shown enough of his life and his community for us to realize that he has a good life here. Immediately we grasp that picture, his world is torn apart by vikings with guns who kill his father and several other members of the village before the rest of them, including his mother and sister, are carried off to a larger ship, bound in chains and stacked next to each other like sardines. During the trip, we watch through Aidan's eyes as his friends die and are thrown overboard, his mother is raped and miscarries and the survivors begin to form into a larger family in order to keep each other alive. After arriving in America, his family is split up and sold. He ends up with his mother and his sister ends up by herself. The language in which all of this is described is chosen to be as disturbing as possible, perhaps so white readers of the book, who will already empathize with Aidan's family, gain a clearer understanding of the pain that comes with being in his position.

Religiously, Barnes makes some very interesting decisions and asks some interesting questions. He chooses to have almost all of the Africans be Muslim, except for the Zulus, who are regarded as bloodthirsty savages for the most part. I fail to understand his choice of Islam as opposed to a more traditionally African religious system, even that of the Egyptians. It makes very little sense to create a grand African civilization and then make its religious base an imported religion. However, it is worth noting that the book critiques certain Islamic practices by choosing to make Kai become a sufi an then having him question several Islamic beliefs. Another interesting set of questions is raised by Aidan's view of slaves who leave behind their religions and convert to Islam. In his eyes, it is almost unpardonable that slaves choose to adopt the religion of their oppressors, even though in a lot of cases, it is done to gain extra freedoms for them and their family. Still, it does raise very interesting questions. Since Barnes' beliefs seem to be more in line with eastern religions than christianity, it is easy to see this also as a question about the large numbers of black people all over the world who adopted christianity from slavers and colonizers.

As I mentioned earlier, I have issues with the way Barnes writes about Kai and his father, Ali because he turns them into benevolent slave masters. Ali seemingly believes that his slaves are human beings. He treats them with respect and allows them to practice their beliefs and retain their names. However, they are still his property and several members of the house do seriously maltreat them so his benevolence is highly suspect. I suspect Barnes may have written him in to show the impossibility of the concept of a benevolent slave master who respects the people he considers his property. Kai is probably a lot closer to what a person would truly have to be like in order to be maintain his principles and treat his slaves like real people. In the beginnings if his friendship with Aidan, he sees him as less of a person, almost a pet or plaything. However, as they get older and wiser, he begins to realize that he owns fellow human beings. This leads him to free his slaves at the cost of his social standing. I felt that part of Barnes' point with him was to show that a really benevolent man couldn't own other people even at the cost of most of what he held dear. Although, technically, Kai doesn't lose everything but he is willing to kill his uncle in order to save Aidan and his family. In doing so, he gives of himself a lot more than most people would in his situation and gains very little in return.

“Lion's Blood” is a very interesting and intricate book. Barnes' future history is incredibly well researched and his characters ask questions that I have a hard time answering. It is definitely something I would recommend to anyone interested in taking a look at slavery from a totally different perspective to open up their minds.

New writing duties

2006-01-20T01:15:00.000-05:00

Those of you who also read Pam's blog already know about my new hobby, a collaborative comics blog called Prep Time Posse. This is another one of those things Okayplayer has gotten me into. The people on this blog are people I usually end up discussing comic books with on the boards. Between all of us I'd imagine there probably hasn't been a significant comics event in the last two or three decades that we lack expertise in. The stuff currently up is definitely gold and I expect that to continue.

(sidenote: the name comes from our version of the standard 'which hero would win in a fight' argument where it was eventually agreed that given enough prep time batman could defeat pretty much anyone)

I don't have a piece up yet but it will be coming soon. In keeping with my comics talk here, it will probably border on the sticky issue of race and comics fandom at some point. I'll also talk about comics I think you should be reading, recommend old stuff I like and maybe work in at least one Milestone Comics post. There will also be some general 'what is wrong with comics' posts

I'll definitely let you know when my stuff starts to roll out.

I'm also taking part in an online food log where I shall be providing all the gory details of my daily eating patterns. I might also use it to log exercise. That I haven't decided yet.

I'm back!!!

2006-01-06T02:14:00.000-05:00

hey people. Merry chrisrmas and a happy new year to you all

Sorry I've been gone for a while. First there was school and then there was me just being distracted by other things. I'm back now though.

Just in time for my return, we finally have Pam's long awaited post on race in science fiction and specifically what happened to the sci-fi channel's adaptation of Ursula LeGuin's 'Earthsea' books here.

She told me about this one a while ago and I've been waiting for it ever since. Please read it soon, that site is apparently going away. Especially since she's a better writer than I am and it shows.

(Incidentally, Pam, that thing I promised you is supposed to ship tomorrow so be on the lookout)

Anyway, I'm back on schedule as of tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'll be talking about yet, but I'll try to surprise you.

Comics plug: What's a Nubian?

2005-11-30T23:24:00.000-05:00

Rich Watson, the writer of Glyphs (which, for those of you who haven't clicked on the link, is a pretty comprehensive look at comics with black characters or creators) is now writing a column for Buzzscope entitled 'What's a Nubian?'

For those of you who missed the reference, its from Kevin Smith's 'Chasing Amy'

Its basically a continuation on the theme of his blog, but in front of a larger audience. For any comic book fans looking for new stuff to pick up I think its very much worth reading, and especially for comic fans of colour its a great resource to find out about books that usually get little to no mainstream exposure

here are columns #1 and #2

I hope you like them

the insomniac personality test

2005-11-30T03:28:00.000-05:00

from Mushtaq

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant.
Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle.
You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs.

For you, comfort and calm are very important.
You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection.
You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

On: politics, sectarianism and ego in the martial arts

2005-11-28T02:41:00.000-05:00

I was relatively lucky in the beginning of my martial arts experience. For the most part everyone's focus was simply on training, getting better and having fun while doing it. We only had a little friction we had with the local karate club, mostly because their teaching style was supremely horrible (their yellow belt test still gives me nightmares)

Post college though, I entered the world of the Chinese martial arts and things changed. While I generally managed to end up with people on the periphery of all the drama, I also saw enough, and spent enough time hearing stories from people who had been training for far longer than me to realize how much ego gets tangled up in the martial arts.

Among the things I've personally seen of heard about:

People creating their own style/organization to give themselves a higher rank

Teachers spreading rumors about each other

Teachers within a style poaching good students from each other

Talented martial artists purposely teaching students the wrong thing for money

Teachers who get offended at the thought of a student learning something from an outside source

Lineage wars (who trained with who and where and for how long)

I could tell you a couple of stories to cover each of those, and I'm still an amateur. I shudder to think of the kind of stories the more experienced martial artists who read this blog could come up with. Its sad really.

Initially I thought this was an issue that was particular to the Chinese arts but as time went on I realized that they seem to be tied into the arts in general, unfortunately. For reasons that probably lie somewhere between ego and greed a lot of people seem to stray in focus from the core idea of training to make themselves better, or teaching to make their students better, and focus on other, more destructive, things instead.

Here's to hoping I never become one of them

A slight detour

2005-11-18T01:38:00.000-05:00

At the moment, I can't find my Lion's Blood commentary. Since I backed up my documents on more than one occasion I have to dig through a bunch of poorly labeled CD's to see if I can find a copy of it anywhere. I hope its not lost, I like to keep track of these things. Plus, if I may say so myself, it was a decent piece of writing.

Anyway, since I don't have that, I decided to transition over to one of my favorite activities, martial arts. I've been slowly getting back into training and its been kicking some stuff loose in my head that I'd like to talk about and get feedback on.

I'll start with a topic that Mushtaq mentioned in his podcast and I have some experience with. The sectarianism and politics that seems to accompany the martial arts, since it is by far the my least favorite part.

Look out for it sometime tomorrow

commentary on Nalo Hopkinson's 'Skin Folk'

2005-11-10T19:56:00.000-05:00

“Skin Folk” is Nalo Hopkinson's third published work of fiction. Unlike her other works though, it is a collection of short stories. Her stories are all extremely engaging and attempt to cover a large range of issues in a fairy small space. The one theme that is prevalent in all of her stories is the concept of facades and the people inside our skins, hence the title. Obviously in a work by a black female author dealing with appearances, there is a strong focus in a lot of stories on issues dealing with race. In dealing with race, she also takes a close look at self-loathing among black people when it comes to both appearance and culture. Specifically our tendency to idolize 'white' features and culture over our own natural appearances and heritage. She also spends a fair amount of time examining that heritage by writing modern stories inspired by Carribean (and, by extension, West African) myth and storytelling. Another theme fairly common in her writing is that of human sexuality in general, the stigma that we have been taught to associate with it and how unhealthy the level of and repression is. Overall, these stories are mostly about discovering and being comfortable with what is in our own skins.

The first theme that really caught my attention was the continuous theme of the tendency in black people to reject our appearance and culture. The two stories which have this specific issue as their themes are “The Glass Bottle Trick” and “A Habit of Waste”. “The Glass Bottle Trick” is the story of a light skinned black woman who marries an extremely dark skinned man only to discover that he has a rather extreme color complex. The only reason he isn't married to a white woman is the fact that all white people intimidate him. Therefore she is his closest replacement to a white woman among black people. He worships her skin and hates his own so much that he killed his two previous light skinned wives so they wouldn't have dark shinned 'monsters' like him. At the end of the story, she discovers the bodies of his ex wives and accidentally releases their spirits to take their revenge on her husband and maybe her as well. “A Habit of Waste” is the story of a black woman with Carribean parents who trades in her body for that of a 'more attractive' white woman and attempts to live life as a white person only to end up missing what she left behind when she sees someone else proudly wearing what used to be her body. In the end, though, she returns to her roots and begins to embrace her culture and family again. In both of these stories, the color struck characters are driven by an intense self loathing to become as white as they can. He does it by marrying fair skinned women and living through them, she does it by actually becoming a white woman. Unfortunately, neither of them is any happier with themselves by the end of their stories.

A lot more stories in this book deal with the issue of sexuality. They examine both homosexual and heterosexual relationships in an attempt to look at and deal with the unhealthy stigma people tend to attach to human sexuality. In “Riding the Red”, “Slow Cold Chick”, “Fisherman” and “Ganger (Ball Lightning)” one of her central themes is sex. “Slow Cold Chick” and “Fisherman” her central female characters are unsure of themselves and their sexuality. Blaise, the female protagonist in the first story suppresses her desires because of her insecurity until they take physical form and begin to lash out at people, forcing her to learn how to take responsibility for what she wants, sexually and otherwise and to accept her bisexuality. The fisherman in her story is actually a woman who takes part in a traditionally male occupation, fishing. At at the end of the week, she accompanies the rest of the fishermen to a whorehouse where the story describes her first time with another woman. Again, it is mostly about her getting over her own insecurities over who she is attracted to and then other people getting over the fact that she doesn't correspond to who they think she is. Both of these stories end with the women embracing their sexuality.

“Riding the Red” is an reinterpretation of “Little Red Riding Hood” in which little red riding hood is a young woman, the wolf is a young man and the hunt is a mating dance. The grandmother in this story is a n old woman reminiscing on her youthful encounters and despairing her daughter's prudishness. At the end of the story, she is waiting for the wolf to come by so she can dance for what may be the last time. “Ganger (Ball Lightning)” is about a couple who only communicate through sex because they are too insecure about who they are and how they feel to communicate any other way. Because of this, they buy electronic 'skins' to make the sex more enjoyable but this pushes them further apart. In the end, the malfunctioning 'skins' lead to them breaking down and discussing the way they feel. This story, is more about the habit some people have of using sex as a replacement for communication,and how unhealthy this practice is.

Just like in her books, Hopkinson also tries to bring the tradition of myth and storytelling that she grew up with into a modern setting. In this book, that results in a series of modern fables in the form of “Tan- Tan and and Dry Bone”, “Greedy Choke Puppy” and “ Something to Hitch Meat To”. The first story is an addition to “Midnight Robber”, her previous book. In this story, Tan-Tan picks up trouble in the form of Dry Bone who, once he has been picked up, cant be put down. So she is forced to feed him while she starves until she figures out that she doesn't have to carry him and lets him go. In the second story, a woman afraid of aging discovers that she is a succoyant, a person who can leave her skin at night and steal life from babies. In an attempt to remain young, she starts killing children around her until her grandmother is forced to kill her. The third story revolves around a young black man tired of the world in which he lives and the job he does. Finally at the peak of his frustration, he receives the gift of a magical adinkra symbol from Ananse that allows him to expose people's true forms. In all of these fables, the central theme is again being comfortable with who you are. Tan-Tan feeds Dry Bone while she grows weaker because she is convinced she deserves the hardship of carrying him. Once she realizes that she has done nothing to deserve him, she figures out a way to get rid of him. In the succoyant's case, she is so scared of growing old alone that she scares off the men who would be interested and resorts to killing children because she isn't comfortable enough with herself to wait for her man to show up. In the third story, the man is being given the ability to look past and make other people see past appearances to what truly is.

In addition to being in incredibly well written set of science fiction stories, this is almost an inspirational self-help book to people on the importance of being comfortable with who you are in order that you can be more comfortable with who everyone else is Hopkinson succeeds really well in making me think and hopefully it will have the same effect on others who read it.

Race and SF part 2 of??: Publishing (a.k.a. The Numbers Don't Lie)

2005-11-07T21:31:00.000-05:00

In the comments for part 1 of my continuing discussion of this topic, Tiel mentioned the publishing companies and their reluctance to publish science fiction by non white writers. I feel that I should probably expand on this a little bit. Now, it just to happens that the volume of published science fiction by black writers is small enough for one person(me, in this case) to be aware of the vast majority of it. I noticed a very interesting trend that I mentioned on Steven Barnes' blog a while back and I figured I'd bring up here too.

Of the major SF publishing houses, exactly four have, to my knowledge, ever published something by a black author. They are

DAW
Charles Saunders

Del Rey
Minister Faust

Tor
Steven Barnes

Warner Aspect
Steven Barnes
Nalo Hopkinson
Walter Mosely
Octavia Butler
Levar Burton
The Dark Matter Anthologies

In other words, one SF publisher has published more black writers than all the other publishers combined. And this is without me stacking the deck and listing each of the writers in the two Dark Matter Anthologies by name (I might have to if Pam wants her name on the list). Also worth considering, DAW published the last Imaro book in 1985, which means they haven't published a black writer in 20 years.

Possible other reasons for this discrepancy besides race? You tell me.

Over on Steven Barnes' blog, he mentioned a while back that one of the most influential publishers in SF for a really long time was on record as stating that it was impossible for black people to create an advanced civilization. My guess, he wasn't the only one who thought that.

On the other hand, it is also impossible to discuss publishing without discussing the readers. Steve Barnes also mentioned that it is considered a publishing reality that a book with a black face on the cover will not sell as well as a book with a white face on the cover.

I'm guessing its a confluence of the fact that
(a) less time and money are spent promoting books by black writers because the publisher simply doesn't expect then to succeed anyway

(b) they get little, if any, shelf space at bookstores for the same reason

(c) Black faces/writers simply do not appeal to the majority white SF readership for reasons they aren't comfortable thinking about

For instance, I wonder what would have happened to Anansi Boys if the cover had been a picture of, say, Lenny Henry as Fat Charlie. My guess, it would still have sold well on the basis of the fact that Neil Gaiman is a celebrated white writer, but the picture would have found its way into conversations somehow.

No offence intended to Neil Gaiman at all, but the fact still remains that non-white characters created by white writers find acceptance to a greater degree than they do when written by non-white writers (also known in certain circles as the 'Spawn' effect)

I might end up talking about race and comic books (very similar dynamic and audience) since SB brought up the Tintin and Asterix comics

commentary on Jewel Gomez's The Gilda stories

2005-11-04T17:54:00.000-05:00

Jewelle Gomez describes herself as an activist for gay rights, womans rights, race and environmental issues.“The Gilda Stories”1 is the first full length novel that she has written. This book is a very difficult one to characterize. It follows the life of Gilda, A black, bisexual female vampire through two centuries of living from slavery in 1850 to environmental devastation in 2050. In the course of Gilda's life, Gomez uses the settings she is placed in and the people she deals with to explore a variety of themes including race, sexuality, environmental destruction, power and its corrupting ability. What makes this book interesting is that, while the overall structure is definitely that of a novel, a majority of the chapters could conceivably be pulled out of the book and read as short stories by someone with no knowledge of the book. Each chapter is basically a snapshot of her life at a point the author thinks we will find interesting.

As usual with my analysis of these books, I start by taking a look at the way race is portrayed in this book. First of all, the only two people Gilda ever kills are both white men attempting to molest and kill her. The first is when she is a young girl on a plantation in 1850 when a man attempts to rape her and she stabs him, which is why she ends up leaving the plantation and becoming a vampire. The second is when she is attacked by two white men looking for a black person to beat up and, in her case, rape. Gilds deals with overt racism in the days when it is overt and less overt racism in the days when its covert. In addition, Gilda's stories mostly happen in predominantly black communities because that is the only place she will not be conspicuous. She works as a hairdresser, poet, and writer in black communities as one of the people. What this does is allow us to use her insights into her life and the people she lives with to gain a better understanding of the people in those communities and the lives they lead. Her black characters are people. Dancers, writers, poets, prostitutes, pimps, slaves etc. They are portrayed in a manner fitting the time period about which she is writing. However, she spends as much time examining issues within the black community as she does examining external racism. One of the biggest issues she mentions is what she considers to be the short-sightedness of a large part of the black liberation movement. Namely the fact that it failed to include the issues of other minority groups like women and homosexuals in the struggle for equality and, in doing so, hamstrung itself. This critique is made

Sexuality is another theme that receives a lot of attention in the book. This is not that surprising considering the fact that Gilda is bisexual. Throughout the book I never got the impression that Gilda was fully comfortable with her sexuality. There is one scene where she has sex with a woman and another one in which she is intimate with a man. For me, however, both of those scenes seemed very awkward as though Gilda could never fully accept herself sexually. In the one scene of lesbian sex in the book, Gilda is almost seduced. When she turns another woman into a vampire she is said to be feeling shame as well as desire. Its especially interesting because the book has a lot of prostitutes in it, from the whorehouse where Gilda lives for a while before her conversion to the prostitutes she services as a hairdresser. With few exceptions, the prostitutes are portrayed as sexually mature and confident women. They are shown as victims of manipulative people as well so its not as though she glamorizes them but they are definitely not written as helpless women but instead as mature women in control of their sexuality making the choices they need to in order to survive.

Another important topic that gets a lot of attention, especially at the end of the book, is the issue of the environment. It is also linked with a larger issue of power and its possibility for misuse. We become aware, the further we get into the future, that the world is slowly being destroyed by man to the point that it is almost unable to maintain human life. The reason this is happening, we re told, is human greed. Basically, the world's issues have been ignored in favor of profit to the point that the human race can't safely live on the planet. The poor must struggle to somehow afford passage to another planet where it is cleaner. The rich, on the other hand, employ Hunters, people trained and chemically enhanced to fight and kill vampires so their blood can be used to give immortality to the same rich, selfish people responsible for the state of the world in the first place. We already know Gilda is environmentally conscious because she leaves at the end of one of her stories to go work for a group of environmentalists but obviously they are unable to bring about the kind of change they are trying for. There are several other points in the book when the theme of the corrupting influence of power is fairly obvious. The book even makes us aware of the fact that there are vampires who, unlike Gilda, enjoy their power over people and use it to manipulate them and then shows us a couple of examples of power- mad vampires. One of whom , Eleanor, enjoys manipulating people and another, Fox, who enjoys inflicting pain because he can.

In the end, this book is really hard to characterize. Gilda is a very interesting, if greatly conflicted, character who serves to examine a wide range of social and personal issues for the character. In that sense it more than achieves its aim. However, it would have been nicer if Gilda hadn't been written as being so unsure of her own nature. Taking the time to create a character like Gilda and then saddling her with guilt both over the fact that she is a vampire and the fact that she is bisexual seems counterproductive to me. Despite that, it is still a great story.

Kwasi's thoughts on race and the genre of Science Fiction (part 1 of ?)

2005-11-02T01:13:00.000-05:00

This post has been rattling around in the back of my head in a thousand different incarnations since pretty much when I started writing this blog, and yet it remains a difficult topic for me to speak on.

There are lots of reasons for this. Among them the simple fact of admitting to being a fan of a genre that, for the most part, either likes to pretend I don't exist or, on recognize that existence as something not worthy of even a minimal amount of respect (for an example of this, see 'Farnham's Freehold')

In my case, the issue takes on a certain amount of extra complexity when you consider that I'm from a place that simply doesn't exist to most SF writers. I can almost count the number of times I've ever seen an SF book reference Africa in any way. The only explicit reference to Ghana I can remember was in John Brunner's 'The Shockwave Rider' and that was as an example in a conversation. There are actually a couple of fairly popular military SF writers who I cannot read anymore because of how they handled Africa in an alien invasion series they co-wrote

So, by virtue of both the shade of my skin and where I was born I am virtually invisible to the perceived SF mainstream, which is overwhelmingly white, hetero, male and only interested in stories by and about other white hetero males. I suppose two out of three isn't bad. I say perceived because I suspect that the reality is that the demographics of the readership are significantly more diverse then the demographics of the people who get to decide what is published. Of course, I could be wrong here, but I doubt it.

Plus, on the occasions when I see something that does resemble me in an SF work, a decent majority of the time its done in such a way that it prevents me from enjoying the rest of the book.

Is it any wonder that this topic tends to be somewhat upsetting to most black SF fans? We literally have had to put aside parts of ourselves on occasion to still be here. That kind of thing takes its toll. And it makes writing even this much a chore. Hopefully with this out of the way, I'll be able to put together the next couple of pieces quickly.

commentary on Colson Whitehead's "The Intuitionist"

2005-11-01T01:03:00.000-05:00

"The Intuitionist", Colson Whitehead's first published book, is a very interesting blend of genres from 'noir' detective stories to science fiction. It has been compared by several reviewers to Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man" and Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" for the way he looks at and writes about race, one of the main themes of this book. The others include gender, man's reliance on machines and the battle of reason over instinct. While the book seems to be easily read, it contains layers and layers of subtext that address many different issues.

Set in an alternate New York City, the story follows a young black woman, Lila May Watson, the first black woman in the prestigious elevator inspectors guild, as she investigates what she believes to be the sabotage of her most prestigious elevator assignment. This case is made more interesting by the fact that she is an Intuitionist, a member of a controversial faction of the guild who intuitively detect the faults with an elevator instead of manually examining the equipment. The Intuitionists have a higher success rate than the Empiricists, who do things the old way. In the guild, Empiricists are the conservative old guard while Intuitionists are the liberals. Therefore, the fact that the only black female guild member is an Intuitionist with a perfect record works in their favor. Since this is an election year in the guild, with Chancre, the current president and an Empiricist, in serious danger of losing, the Empiricists aren't too sad about the failure of the elevator she inspected. In the process of her investigation, however she becomes aware of the existence of the 'black box', the perfect elevator designed by the founder of empiricism before his death and she becomes determined to find the plans for the black box before anyone else does.

The main characters in this world are all very complex and have several layers to their character and their actions. A good example of this is Pompey, the only other black person in the department and the first black elevator repairman ever. From the beginning we are made aware both of Pompey's hostility towards Lila May and his subservience to his white coworkers and superiors. This makes it easy to simply see him as an 'uncle tom' and move on and this is what Lila May originally does, going as far as to make him the prime suspect in the sabotage of her elevator, thinking that the Empiricists would find it funny to have one of the only two black people in the guild sabotage the other. However, she realizes that in resenting him back, she just furthers the status quo. We also find out what his true motivation is for laughing at racist jokes and sitting through minstrel shows pretending to be amused. He considers it a worthwhile sacrifice to move his family into a better neighborhood away from the crime in his. His frustration with her is partially directed at himself. He feels she should be grateful to him for the sacrifices he made to allow more black people in and at the same time he hates her for not serving them the way he does and thus calling into question his life choices.

Lila May is herself a very complex character. Unlike Pompey, she does not become a 'pet' black person in order to advance. What she does instead is to make herself into an almost emotionless machine. Her work record is spotless, she is always immaculately dressed and she is polite to a fault but she does only what is required of her, socializing with only one other inspector and living in a spartan apartment with no luxuries. She suffers from the double disadvantage of being black and a woman in a highly conservative world. Most of the black people we are shown are menial labourers while most of the women are either working or entertaining men. In order to be neither of these, she is willing to settle for being an invisible, highly efficient worker.

Another character I enjoyed exploring was James Fulton, the deceased inventor of Intuitionism and the 'black box' which everyone seems to me looking for. Among Intuitionists and elevator inspectors in general, he is revered as a visionary however they remain unaware of the fact that Fulton was in fact a black man. Fulton's mother was raped by a member of the white family whose house she cleaned and he grew up around black people before 'passing' in order to become an elevator inspector. His original idea in creating Intuitionism was as a joke that liberal members of the guild picked up as a truth. Later, it became a way to get people to think about looking beyond appearances at the soul of a person instead of at their skin. Unsurprisingly the first person to realize this is Lila May when she reads his books on Intuitionism after discovering that he was writing as a black person. What makes Fulton interesting is his way of fighting the system. Unlike Pompey who simply gives in or Lila May who accepts her role as an outsider, he chooses to poke fun at the system from within it and slowly change its ideology to one that is more racially tolerant.

Another interesting thing Whitehead does is contrast white liberal and conservative groups, as represented by the Intuitionists and Empiricists, in their treatment of black people. In his eyes, they all appear lacking. The Empiricists are generally more open in their dislike of black people. At several points in the book, they are open in their dislike of Lila May and call her and other black workers niggers to their faces. In a Party for Elevator inspectors organized by Chancre, a minstrel show receives the most enthusiastic response from the audience. The Intuitionists, on the other hand, seem more friendly to black people. They give Lila May an inspecting position in the most prominent new building in the city, which just happened to be named after a black actress and they appear to be very helpful in her search for the 'black box'. However, they also use her shamelessly as part of their election campaign to show how liberal they are, as if the fact that the only black female elevator inspector is also an Intuitionist makes them better than the Empiricists. Their 'help' also turns out to be little more than manipulation because Fulton's memoirs mention her name. In reality, they care about her about as much as the Empiricists but are more subtle about their prejudices. Ultimately, she has no one to depend on but herself.

Colson Whitehead's book, is an incredible achievement, especially since it is one of his first written works. It it is easy to see how comparisons were made to Ralph Ellison and Tini Morrison's masterpieces. It presents a series of incredibly interesting yet human characters with believable flaws and uses them to examine a whole myriad of issues in a very intelligent way. I will be very interested to see what he comes out with next.

Commentary on Walter Mosely's 'Futureland'

2005-10-28T00:26:00.000-04:00

"Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World" is Walter Mosley's second science fiction book. Unike the title suggests, it is not a series of unrelated short stories. Instead, all the stories share the same world and have common characters and locations. This makes the book more like a novel which looks at the lives of several different people in order to fully examine the world in which they live, a generation after this one. In doing so, Mosley covers a very wide range of issues and makes some scarily plausible predictions about the direction in which we are headed. In a little over three hundred and fifty pages, he looks at the future of race, gender, global capitalism, the media, civil liberties, the American obsession with beauty and a host of other topics. What really makes it disturbing to read is the fact that, especially after the September eleventh attacks, it is already possible to see some of his predictions beginning to happen.

Mosley's characters are also an incredibly diverse and unusual cast, especially for a science fiction novel. They include factory workers, criminals, the smartest person on the planet, the first female heavyweight boxing champion and a futuristic replacement for Easy Rawlins. Also, they are are representative of the underclass in the society. They usually represent the common, even more repressed, people who live in that world and it is through them that he makes us aware of the injustices of his brave new world.

The nine stories that make up "Futureland" are entitled "Whispers in the Dark", "The Greatest", "Doctor Kismet", "Angel's Island", "The Electric Eye", "Voices", "Little Brother", "En Masse" and "The Nig in Me". I am not going to deal with each story separately because they share similar themes, the same environment and sometimes the same characters. Because of this, it makes more sense to consider all of the stories as one large novel and deal with it in terms of characters and themes rather than revisit the same themes over and over again in a variety of different scenarios. Obviously, I cannot cover all the themes that show up in this book since it is incredibly dense in the issues it covers. However, some of these themes receive far more attention than others so the focus of this paper shall be narrowed somewhat to look mainly at what I consider to be the most important themes in the book. These will be race, global capitalism and civil liberties. All of these themes show up in almost every story and so it makes sense to spend the most amount of time dealing with them.

Obviously, I am going to start off taking a look at the way race is presented in "Futureland". The very first story in the book, "Whispers in the Dark", gives us a very apt idea of what Mosley considers the fate of black people to be a generation from now. Namely, still an underclass. In the story, the smartest human being alive, Ptolemy Bent is born to a family too poor to afford the kind of education required by the state for someone of his intelligence. In order to keep him from being taken away, his uncle,Chill, a convict with no job prospects, is forced to sell several of his body parts ,including his eyes, spine, and penis, in order to keep the family together. According to Mosley, in their community this has become the norm for people desperate for money. In "Angel's Island", we see the inside of private-owned maximum security prison where, as usual, a majority of the inmates are people of color. In "The Electric Eye", we are introducet to Folio Johnson, the futuristic replacement for Easy Rawlins. We are also introduced to the International Socialists, a modern day version of the Nazi party who do not allow Jews in their party because "Zionism is incompatible with social evolution" . Later on in that story and in "En Masse" and "The Nig in Me", we are made aware of their plot to crate a race specific virus targetting black people. However, the virus mutates and instead kills everyone who is not at least 12.5 precent black. This solves nothing, however, as groups of 'white' looking survivors, hispanics and black survivors begin to fight each other showing that there is no easy answer to the question of race. As you can see from the title of his last story, the word 'nigger' has been shortened to 'nig' but still maintains all of the controversy about its use that it has now.

Capitalism and Globalization are two other concepts that show up in virtually every story. Curiously, Mosley chooses to call his Nazis socialists which indicates to me that he is not advocating any kind of socialist revolution. Instead he is just pointing out issues with the current system of capitalism in use pretty much everywhere and the direction in which it is going. One of the new concepts he introduces is the concept of companies having achieved sovereign status. The company he uses to illustrate this concept is Macrocode International,the largest company on the planet, which turns up in almost every one if his stories. In "Doctor Kismet", we are shown the sovereign island state that doubles as Macrocode's headquarters and we are introduced to its leader, Dr. Kismet. We also learn that the fastest growing religion on the planet is actually a Macrocode company. In "The Electric Eye", we find out that a branch of Macrocode is helping develop a virus targeted at black people. We also find out that there are only five independent restaurants in the whole of New York. All the others are members of one franchise or the other. Therefore, corporations have virtually wiped out independent traders. In "Little Brother" a follower of Infochurch, the Macrocode religion, is unwittingly used as a guinea pig to to test a Macrocode designed automated justice system for poor people. In "En Masse", we are given a very grim view of the life of the future worker. People are treated like machines and their every action monitored. Any kind of individuality or human contact is punished. Even hugging your spouse could violate sexual harassment policies. A lack of a job means a person goes into government sponsored housing and becomes a 'backgrounder', eating and sleeping in shifts to conserve space while having almost no hope of getting a job and returning to a normal life. In his world, the corporations legally control the people who work for them. Considering what I know of modern corporate America, it is not hard to see where these predictions come from nor is it hard to believe in their plausibility.

The final theme I choose to examine is that of civil liberties. Already, since September, there have been several attempts by the government to gain more control of its citizens at the expense of their constitutional rights. In "Futureland", this has been taken several very frightening steps further. The convicts in "Angel's Island"have had their constitutional rights legally revoked for the period of time that they are prisoners meaning that the prisons are the final judges of their fate. In this case they are all used as slave labor on a plantation. All citizens are implanted with tracking chips to make it easier for the police to keep track of their activities and the cities are patrolled by little spy cameras called 'nosers' which, like the video cameras going up everywhere today, keep tabs on people. It is also required that newspapers publish the names of anyone with a criminal conviction so employers can be sure the people they are hiring are not criminals. Again, these scenarios are a little too frighteningly possible, especially seeing how everyone is trying to cash in on the increased sense of vulnerability in this country following 9-11.

What makes this book so unsettling is how immediately possible it is. Mosley proposes very little that is truly revolutionary. Most of what he does propose is easily a very short step away from the world we live in now, which is incredibly scary. With luck this book will never come any closer to reality than it is now but I'm generally cynical when it comes to human nature so I'm not holding my breath.

commentary on Octavia Butler's 'Bloodchild'

2005-10-26T04:05:00.000-04:00

"Bloodchild and Other Stories" is a collection of five short stories and two essays. The title story "Bloodchild" has won her several awards since it was first published including the Hugo and Nebula awards, which are the equivalent of Pulitzers to Science Fiction writers. It is a heavily reviewed and analyzed work. The other four works are titled "The Evening, The Morning and The Night", "Near of Kin" "Speech Sounds" and "Crossover". All of these stories in one way or another deal with the dynamics of human interaction. "Crossover" and "Near of Kin" may not necessarily be considered Science Fiction stories. They fall more into the category of dramatic writing and have little in the way of Science Fiction elements in the way they are written. They are still incredibly good stories. Overall, there seems to be an air of pessimism that clings to her writing as though she expects very little of people especially in the way we interact with each other. This holds especially true for her depiction of relationships between men and women where the relationships invariably involve the woman being powerless and making the sacrifices in the relationship.

Octavia Butler is considered by many to be, along with Samuel R. Delany, the first generation of black science fiction writers. She is also considered a very important back feminist writer in some circles. Generally, all of her works that I have come across tend to contain elements that examine the power dynamics resulting involved in race and gender. Her best known works are "Kindred" and the "Parable" series of books comprising "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Talents". These works deal a lot with themes of race and its scars on American society, gender roles and their associated power dynamics as well as numerous issues of social exploitation and the way human beings tend to relate to each other. I chose not to read any of those for several reasons. Firstly, I had already read them and didn't see the point in rereading works I already knew. Secondly, everyone reads those books. It made more sense for me to look to one of her less known but still respected works and maybe contribute, probably in a very minimal way, to the body of knowledge surrounding her works. There was also the fact that "Bloodchild" is her only collection of short stories and as such it would cover a wider range of topics than any one of her novels. Finally, I just like reading short stories so that book was more appealing to me.

The first story in this compilation is "Bloodchild", probably her most famous short story. The story takes a look at a group of humans forced to leave Earth for reasons that are never made clear. They are taken in by an alien race that keeps them in a 'Preserve' then uses them, primarily the males, to incubate their young in a process very similar to pregnancy and childbirth. The central character in this story is Gan, a young man coming of age who has been promised to the alien 'protector' of his family. The story focuses on several things simultaneously. On one hand, it is Butler's pregnant man' story about a man choosing to carry children out of love in a unequal relationship. Gan chooses, in the end, to not kill himself or his protector but instead to allow her to, in an almost sexual scene, implant her eggs in him. He does partly to protect his family and partly because he cant stand the thought of her being that intimate with someone else. On the other hand, it is a story about power dynamics between two different races where one has the power to dictate the terms under which the other shall live. The humans live a life slightly better than that of livestock where they are denied access to weapons and anything else the aliens feel they shouldn't have, can't leave their 'Preserve' and have to give up their children to act as incubators for alien children. In the end it is a truly disturbing story.

The next story in the collection is " The Evening, The Morning and The Night". This story deals with the experiences of a girl, who remains unnamed, born with Duryea-Gode disease. This is a fictional disease that causes a person to go crazy and attempt to dig their way out of their own skins, usually injuring themselves and people around them. As a result of how dangerous they are, they are forced to wear tags declaring they have the disease and are discriminated against and avoided by general society. She finds out in college that because both of her parents had the disease, she has pheromones which allow her to influence people afflicted with her condition. Butler's description of what her character goes through seems like it was taken from her experiences in college. All the college students with the disease are ignored and harassed by their fellow 'normal' students. A brilliant student talks about the fact that his genes will probably keep him from being accepted to medical school. They live as pariahs in a society that fears them. This kind of reaction plus their knowledge of impending death turns them into a group of very focused students and very productive citizens. The point of this , says Butler herself, is to examine how a person's genes can affect the path they choose to take in life. The other interesting point about this story is Butler's creation of a special group of women, a matriarchy of her own design, who tend to the sick in their community and who, ultimately, everyone in the community comes to rely on.

The third story in this volume is entitled "Near of Kin" I can't really characterize it as a science fiction story. It is more of a contemporary fiction story which focuses heavily on human relationships. As usual, Butler take on human relationships is more than a little cynical. The entire story revolves around a discussion between a young woman, also unnamed, and her uncle when she comes back home to bury her estranged mother. The conversation for the most part deals with her relationship with her mother. For the most part, she feels that the only reason her mother had her was to prove that she was fertile after she had miscarried four times. Later in the story it is revealed that she is actually the product of an incestuous relationship between her mother and her uncle and that the reason her mother avoided her may have been guilt over her conception. Since he mother is dead, all we have are two differing opinions on a very dysfunctional relationship. The daughter, who is hurt and bitter at being cast away, and the uncle, who still loves his sister and insists on her goodness. The relationship between the daughter/niece and the father/uncle is probably the most stable of those portrayed in the book all which isn't saying that much. They are both unsure of how to behave around each other because of the fact that their relationship is so unclear. Butler calls this her sympathetic incest story I find it sad that there is very little in the way of redeeming human relationships in the story.

"Speech Sounds" is the title of the next story. It is a grim story of a world where a strange new disease has either killed people or taken away their language ability to some degree. Some people are more affected than others but the disease hits men the hardest. The protagonist of this story, a woman named Valerie Rye, retains her ability to speak and understand spoken language, a fact she hides from the rest of the world for her own safety. In the course of the story she meets a man she calls 'Obsidian' who retains his ability read and write and continues to lead a life as an LAPD officer despite the fact that all law and order has vanished. This story is used to examine a number of themes. Among them is the idea of how little removed human society is from savagery and lawlessness and how much violence is caused by people's envy of each other's position. Rye is forced to conceal her ability to speak since it will probably get her killed. When she first finds out about Obsidian's ability to read, she initially feels jealousy and hatred. He is also initially envious after he finds out that she can speak and these are the two most sane people we are shown in the story. All the other men in the story are, for the most part, violent and irrational. All the other women in the story are basically trying to survive and willing to take any man who will have them because of the shortage of men. We see Rye court Obsidian in order to get him to stay with her. She knows he probably wont stay for long but she is willing to have him for as long as he wants because he is better than most of the men she's met. In the end, the story is another incredibly well written but pessimistic look at human relations.

The final story in this compilation is entitled "Crossover" which, incidentally, is one of the first short stories she ever sold. It is another that doesn't really qualify as a science fiction story. Its more of a story of the person she was afraid she would become if she didn't become a writer. In that way, I suppose it could qualify as an alternate history. The main character is another unnamed woman. She has a dead end job in a factory which she hates and lives in constant fear of loneliness and death. She plans to kill herself but is too scared of dying to do it. As a result of a disfigurement, she suffers from serious self esteem problems and does not consider herself to be worth the man she has so she drives him away. In the end of this story we see her behavior getting even more self destructive. Butler says in her commentary on this story that the fear of becoming someone like this is what kept her writing when she worked under similar circumstance. It makes it easier for you to understand the focus that turned her into one of the best science fiction writers of our time.

One could get the idea from my opinions of the stories that I don't like them. On the contrary, I think they are incredible, if cynical, examinations of human power dynamics. While they are kind of depressing in their conclusions on the fate of humanity in general, they are also hopeful that there might be a change in the way we treat each other.

Slight shift in schedule

2005-10-26T02:30:00.000-04:00

I started writing the Race and SF post, but found myself overwhelmed by all I wanted to talk about and caught up in the wide range of possible directions I could take the post in.

There was also a little more anger than I expected. I'm going to attempt to refine what I have and give it focus in my free time tomorrow.

In the meantime, I Figured I'd keep my word to a couple of people, including Pam, and put up something from a series of papers I wrote in my senior year of college as part of a privatereading I took examining black science fiction. Basically I reviewed a series of books and discussed the issues they adressed, then used them all together to write a paper on the varied ways they all tended to deal with the issue of race and other important themes.

The books were(in no real order)

'Bloodchild and other stories' - Octavia Butler
'The Intuitionist' - Colson Whitehead
'Lion's Blood' - Steven Barnes
'Skin Folk' - Nalo Hopkinson
'The Gilda Stories' - Jewelle Gomez
'Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent Future' - Walter Mosely

I'll probably put up a new essay every couple of days until they are all up. I hope you find them interesting

Topics for this week:

2005-10-24T10:47:00.000-04:00

Martial arts (Partly inspired by Mushtaq's recent posts)

and the eternally underdiscussed issue, race and speculative fiction (partly inspired by issues surrounding Anansi Boys, partly just stuff I keep meaning to mention)

there might be the odd personal note in there too

I hope you like it

Anansi Boys

2005-10-15T17:22:00.000-04:00

I think this may be the second or third time I'm gloating on here about having the book signed to me. This is definitely staying high on the list of things I am thankful for. As is becoming common for this blog, it gets a brief review, and a brief note on issues I'm becoming aware of surrounding the ethnicity of its protagonists (basically the fact that the book is about black people is churning up various issues for various reasons. I'll address one of them)

Ok, so a brief review. As I'm sure you are all aware, the book is about a man everyone refers to as Fat Charlie, who is, unknown to him, one of the two sons of Anansi, the trickster god who I grew up hearing stories about. Charlie finds out about his father, as well as the existence of a brother he never knew of, when his father dies suddenly.

As a result of his father's death, Charlie meets his brother Spider, who inherited their father's magic and his love of tricks. As a result of meeting his brother and being made aware of his family's legacy, Charlie's life goes through a series of rapid, unexpected changes that take him from London to Florida to the Caribbean in an effort to get himself out of trouble, understand his new life and come to terms with his family.

Now, I've always been a huge fan of Neil Gaiman. Partly because he's one of the best writers I've ever come across when it comes to harnessing the power of myth to tell a great story and make it seem almost commonplace. I'd put him up there with Nalo Hopkinson and Terry Pratchett in that respect. Which reminds me, on the off chance he'll ever come across this, *some* people are still waiting for another 'Good Omens' style collaboration and I think we've been more than patient.

Part of the reason this book strikes a chord with me is the fact that Ananse stories originated among my father's people. This is a piece of mythology that I am really close to and I'm delighted to see non euro myth handled with this level of respect and sophistication. I have a sneaking suspicion though, that his use of a fairly 'obscure' piece of African and Caribbean myth to power his story will receive some some comments a lot less positive than my own.

And finally, my tiny commentary on color issues surrounding the book. I ran across mention of the fact that there is very little to suggest that Charlie is black in the way the book is written. Obviously it can be inferred from the fact that his father is descended from an African myth that he must be at least biracial, but very little mention is actually made of colour in the book. The fact that its even worth mentioning says a lot about how the 'default' visual for a person is always white if they are without explicit ethnic descriptors, especially in a genre as whitewashed as science fiction. I have to wonder if that was done deliberately to feel out people's reactions or whether it was a side effect of Neil Gaiman being Neil Gaiman. Either way, it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book since I assumed Charlie was going to be black anyway. In fact I didn't notice it until after I was done with the book. It is something I expect black science fiction fans will talk about to a degree either way.

My Fledgling review

2005-10-13T00:34:00.000-04:00

In the last week or so I've gone through two books in my spare time. Of course by spare time I mean time I was supposed to spend asleep. Still, it was Neil Gaiman and Octavia Butler. What is sleep measured against those? Plus *sigh* I'm an addict. I literally have to make myself put books down every time I walk into a bookstore. I need to find a good used bookstore in the area, my collection has giant planet sized craters in it.

Anyway, back to the book. Octavia Butler's 'Fledgling' joins a select few books that I actually bought in hardcover and I'd say its worth it. The story is basically about a young girl, Shori, who wakes up one morning badly wounded and with no real memory of who she is or what happened to her. Over the course of the book we find out that she's actually a vampire and someone means her serious harm. By the end she gets a much better idea of who she is and manages to save herself and those she cares about from her enemies.

The real point of any Octavia Butler book, though, still remains how she handles issues like race, gender and the family structure. Shori is a product of an experiment to produce vampires capable of surviving in the sunlight for at least brief periods of time. In order to do this, vampire DNA is mixed with that of humans. Not just any humans, but black people. Shori is literally one of the first black vampires. As you can imagine, this tends to create a little bit of an issue with more conservative members of the community.

As for family structure, it continues the theme of matriarchal extended family systems that have shown up in several of her other books and short stories. She makes it a point to fully flesh out the dynamics of how such a system would be run, including possible issues with jealousy.

I should point out though, that she continues excel at writing sex scenes that genuinely creep me out. I'd explain why. Still that's just a quibble, and not even a good one, because my sense it that the sex scene in question was meant to disturb.

Its still a great book, and one I'd definitely recommend even if it means waiting for the paperback.

Tagged

2005-10-06T21:59:00.000-04:00

Tiel passed me a meme, which I shall now infect others with

Seven things I plan to do:
1. Stop doubting myself
2. learn Mandarin, Spanish and Swahili
3. get a teaching certification in Dachengquan
4. Fight in some amateur san shou competitions
5. Get a science fiction story published
6. Learn to code at an advanced level in Python
7. Become a decent freerunner

Seven things I can do:
1. cook a decent meal
2. make people laugh
3. get myself into trouble
4. dance pretty well
5. soak up information like a sponge
6. Build a computer from parts
7. be brutally honest

Seven things I can't do:
1. walk into a bookstore, record store or comic book store and leave empty handed
2. a full side split (sadly, not even close)
3. not overthink things
4. not treat people as individuals
5. draw a perfect circle or straight line
6. be hurtful without provocation
7. understand animals

Seven things I say most often:
1. oh s*&t
2. in my opinion
3. ummm....
4. no offence but...
5. its not that deep
6. I need to train more
7. I need sleep (usually really late at night when my eyes refuse to focus)

Seven people I want to pass this tag to:
SB
Jef
Pam
Minister Faust
DJ Rue
........
any of my readers want a spot, comment and I'll be more than happy to slide you on

Counting my online blessings

2005-10-05T02:13:00.000-04:00

For those of you who also check out Pam's blog, you already know that she outdid herself, and won me as her eternally grateful servant, by getting me a SIGNED COPY OF NEIL GAIMAN'S ANANSI BOYS!

Yes, its in all caps, something which I generally have a firm rule against doing anywhere. That's how excited I am and how much this means to me. I literally don't have the words to properly say thank you. So I'll settle for putting it up someplace everyone is bound to see it. I will pass the favour on, and the first chance I get to return it I'll do that too.

While dancing about the house (literally) in joy, it occured to me that I have been very fortunate in my online interactions with people. The least of my fortunes have been the things people have sent me. Including, but not limited to, the complete run of Gary Phillips' 'Shot Callers' for my growing black comic creators collection and the hugely informative Guide to getting it on! (probably the most you'll ever hear me say about my sex life, at least for now)

At a certain point in my life I was very much in danger of becoming a hermit and a misanthrope, and yet I have been fortunate enough to constantly run into people who remind me how much kindness and genuine humanity there is out there, both online and in real life. For that I thank you all.

ooooh

2005-09-24T21:19:00.000-04:00

Guess what I'll be getting myself next month

*geeked*

Why wasn't I notified?

2005-09-23T00:12:00.000-04:00

Apparently Octavia Butler's new long awaited book 'Fledgling' which also happens to be about vampires is already out. I'm usually all over these things. Plus I've been waiting for this one for a while. How I lost track of it is shaping up to be one of the universe's biggest mysteries.

I plan to get around to reading that pretty soon. Usually I'm opposed to buying hardover books because of how bulky thay are and the price premium, but this is Octavia Butler so I'll make an exception.

Another book I've been reading

2005-09-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

No, its not the tale of the warrior women. Expect that in about two weeks or so. Instead, today we shall be talking about a much older book that was given to me by my aunt (for which I'm extremely grateful)

Timothy Gallowey's 'The Inner Game of Tennis'. I'm pretty sure some of you have read this before since it has been around for a while. For those of you who haven't, If you have any interest at all in any discipline that involves human movement, or in just gaining a better understanding of how your mind works, I'd advise at least checking this out of your local library.

The philosophy behind it seems to be derived from Buddhist thought. Its purpose is basically to get us to let the ego step aside so that the part of us that actually learns and acts take control. One of the interesting things about this method seems to be how much it affects the learning curve behind physical activities. As I read the book it was easy to look back at my past and realize how certain breakthrough moments in martial arts classes had been because of my ability, for a brief while, to live in the moment the actual movement was taking place without any form of fear or doubt.

What he tries to do in the book is provide suggestions on how to take that moment of absolute concentration and expand it so that it becomes a part of how we live rather than an occasional accident. While his examples all had to do with tennis, the basic principles and concepts he used are widely applicable. I'm working some of them into my daily practice to see what they can do for me.

Bottom line, read it. Worst case it'll be an interesting read with no new information. Best case, it'll make you change how you think about the process of learning/living.

On: The tragedy of mismanagement that is Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-02T12:29:00.000-04:00

This article is by a man who I have a great deal of respect for. It should be showing up on The Independent Weekly at some point soon but I saw no reason to wait.

Welcome To The Terrordome:

Race, Class, Misplaced Priorities and Optional Tragedy.

I am, saddened, appalled, outraged and disgusted at my government’s gross negligence, monstrous mismanagement and callous indifference toward the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I am, at this moment, ashamed to be an American. And let me say, preemptively, that if anyone replies “well get out then” I will punch you dead in your face. Yes. It’s that real.

My initial response, like those of most of us who follow human tragedy, was one of shock, pity, empathy. From whence, then, comes this wave of anger, this storm surge of emotion seething within me that threatens to overcome my better nature? It comes with the realization that, despite the capricious and uncontrollable nature of the hurricane, the vast majority of the tableau of misery that plays out before us represents an Optional Tragedy. Examination of the facts that lie in the background, below the din of sensational news headings, reveals a truth irreconcilable with the lofty ideals that we export around the world at gunpoint: these people are dying mainly because they are poor, and black. Beyond that, though, and not contradictorily, these people are also dying because of the historic ineptitude and criminal indifference of a Bush administration that has made the Federal Emergency Management Agency a slavish servant of their idiotic ideology.

Optional? Yeah. In the earliest days of the news coverage, reporters and talking heads parroted lines about people who decided to ‘ride it out’, as if the majority of the people in the path of Hurricane Katrina truly had a say in the decision. The 2000 census listed New Orleans’ population at 485,000, with 27% below the ridiculously low federal poverty level. That works out to about 135,000 people, not counting others who may have slipped below the line during our past five years of prosperity. The median income in New Orleans is $27,000, so half of those 485,000 people made less than that. And that says nothing of the surrounding areas of Louisiana, or of those living in Mobile, Alabama, Biloxi, Mississippi, or in places so remote that they are not even on the national radar.

How many people in households making $27,000 a year can afford to just up and take a few hundred-miles trip on a couple of days’ notice? Unlike a handful of adventurers and some hardheaded veterans of hurricanes past, these people were not trying to ‘ride it out’, they had no ride out. Assuming, they did have a car, in reliable, working condition, could they afford a tank of gas, at over $2.50 per gallon? A hotel stay? Don’t kid yourself. They didn’t choose to stay, they were Left Behind, like those forsaken by God in the best-selling fictional biblical account of the ‘end times’. These souls were not Left Behind by God, though, they were left behind by their fellow man.

The only ‘option’ exercised was the option of the various city, state and federal emergency management agencies to NOT provide for their evacuation. There should have been convoys of buses and military transport vehicles BEFORE the hurricane, offering transport to safety for any and all citizens. And yet, on Tuesday I was hearing news anchors asking the dim, but by then-rhetorical questions of “Why didn’t they leave?”, leaving talking heads and studio experts to explain that economics played a major part, while giving no specifics, and allowing unsophisticated viewers to guess for themselves how many were dirt poor versus those who were hardheaded, and kinda ‘got what they deserved’.

What they SHOULD have been discussing was why nothing was done by the government to provide transportation for these people to get them out of harm’s way. Hmm... Save that for angry editorialists to hash out in long-assed columns. But I don’t really expect much depth from national news media these days, so that, while disappointing and maddening, it was not surprising. What was absolutely shocking, however, was to hear Michael Brown, Director of FEMA, on Thursday evening, following a live CNN broadcast from the convention center in New Orleans, speaking, repeatedly, in terms of people who “CHOSE” to stay. Even after the anchor, to his credit, corrected him and mentioned the poorest of the poor status of those Americans living in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, Brown stubbornly or ignorantly continued to use the word “chose” to describe why the people were in the path of Katrina’s wrath.

More appalling, however, was that he, the top FEMA official, did not know until hearing CNN’s report in the background that there were thousands of people who had been stranded at the New Orleans Convention Center for three days without food or water. YOU CAN’T EVEN WATCH CNN?? That really inspires my faith in our government’s resolve.

The herding of people into the Superdome was an act of desperation, necessitated by the utter lack of a plan to evacuate people who had no transportation from the city. The president, dull-witted as ever, proclaimed on Thursday that, “I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

You don’t think? I’ll buy that. It didn’t cross your mind while playing golf, on yet another of your record number of vacations. And you must have MISSED the news I watched, which, following Katrina’s deadly romp through Florida, warned that a Category 5 hurricane would destroy New Orleans as we know it, by destroying the levee and canal system. The president could have also looked at disaster readiness reports from FEMA in 2001 (pre 9/11), which listed a category 5 hurricane in N.O. as one of the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country.

Can’t recall when you saw that report, Mr. Bush? It was after you appointed a political crony with no disaster management expertise (your former Texas chief of staff John Allbaugh) as director of FEMA. And before you downsized FEMA from a cabinet level department and made it part of the Department Of Homeland Security. And before you started your optional war in Iraq (which by the way, is where 35% of the disaster area’s National Guard troops are). It was also before you decided to privatize the agency, and contract out a lot of its function. And definitely before this June, when you slashed the New Orleans’ Army Corps Of Engineers budget by $71.4 million, including money designed to prevent floods and shore up the levees.

Bush’s administration in 2001 decried that FEMA could engender a ‘culture of entitlement’ (what’s all that ‘provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare’ stuff about, anyway?) among citizens. Under the savvy direction of Allbaugh, armed with no disaster training but good ol’ Texas business know-how, FEMA reckoned it could save $200 million from its budget by cutting so-called ‘mitigation’ strategies, grants used to essentially help prevent disasters, by moving people from flood plains, and making improvements to local infrastructure and emergency facilities. $200 million is paltry (I daresay, niggardly), compared to the billions of dollars of damage that hurricanes do to our increasingly built up coastlines. The old chief of the New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers quit over the continual slashing of his budget and the tying of his hands regarding flood preparedness. The current chief stated on national TV, after the levee breaks, that they were only built to withstand a category 3 hurricane, and that was ok, because it was an acceptable risk for the money they had to spend. If he were in corporate America he’d be soo fired. As it stands, he’ll probably be promoted.

I’ve learned all of this troubling information after the fact. It is infuriating enough. But to juxtapose this record of governmental malfeasance with the images and reports, first trickling, now pouring, from the Superdome? Putting them there was desperate and, by definition short term. I worried when they said folks needed to bring their own food. But with no running water (ie, no working bathrooms), and no electricity, let alone AC, or food, or drinking water, the place has become the Terrordome, a brooding, stinking cesspool of people cramped together in ignorance and uncertainty, and increasingly littered with corpses of victims of the colossal ineptitude of the public officials paid to protect and serve them. The conditions are not only worse than those of any prison in the US, if the inhabitants were rottweiler or pitbull puppies, the ‘owners’ would be arrested for cruelty. They are sitting and sleeping in their own feces because their government said “come here and we will help you”, and then never came back. Even slaves had water, and enough gruel to sustain the strongest through the Middle Passage.

We, who can project our military might all the way around the globe, could not get troops there right after the hurricane, and buses, and amphibious marine transports to get these people out? Had they done so, and not left some of those Left Behind to play out this sick, Lord Of The Flies type scenario (with Wal-Mart guns), perhaps some of these suffering people would not have been doubly and trebly victimized?

I see children on tv screaming “help us” and sad-faced news people zooming by in their vans, footage in the can. I see looped footage of looting, as if stealing t-shirts (or, stupidly, tv’s) somehow justifies the treatment of the miserable yet law-abiding masses of people waiting to die in the hot sun. People forced to push their dead grandmothers off into a corner, against a wall, so the stink of her body does not overpower those still hanging on. People who have climbed through roofs and slid through windows with jagged glass, untreated, or waded through waist high filth, to have guns drawn on them by cops threatening to shoot them for taking the only available food from stores that will never see another customer. And the many people who have waited for days for buses that did not come and who have literally dived off of the elevated highway ramps to their sacrificial death on the hard concrete below, on the altar of inhumanity, indifference, and misplaced priorities. Hard concrete. Like the hearts of those who say “we’re doing all we can” but who expect us to believe that a single gunshot warrants turning around a National Guard helicopter, thwarting these ‘heroes’ from rescuing old ladies and babies on hand-cranked life support, when their brethren face far more danger in Iraq, ducking bombs and bullets for no good reason.

“They chose to stay”. No. ‘We’ chose to leave them, and every death of a person who could have been evacuated, before, or right after the hurricane was optional. Governors have called this ‘our Tsunami’ as they fly safely over the carnage. No. That is not quite right. Death, in the Tsunami, was democratic. The super rich and abject poor alike were swept away with little to no forewarning. No. Here, in the world’s biggest self-promoting democracy, we had options, and, like so many of our policies and politicians on a daily basis, we opted not to give a damn about our poor. And so they died. And we wring our hands about gas prices. Every needlessly dead person’s body should be piled at the feet of the irresponsible officials. So they can ponder their options.

Derek M. Jennings

You have the option to stand up for those who are not being heard. Write or call your congressperson, the White House, major news agencies and your friends. Inform them of what is really going on, how it looks to you, as a citizen, and how it looks to a world which is probably as saddened for our loss as they are to see that we have yet again spectacularly failed to live out our ideals and our professed faith.

Make yourself heard:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
http://www.house.gov/writerep/

More Info:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com
http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2004-09-22/cover.html

NPR story from 2002 on possible results of a category 5 hurricane striking New Orleans. The closest thing to prophecy I have heard in a while: Part I Part II

Interesting.....

2005-08-31T01:49:00.000-04:00

Concerning news coverage of the hurricane. Look
here
here
and here

I'd rather not editorialize on this. Draw your own conclusions first

Pam knows Lenny Henry?

2005-08-31T01:02:00.000-04:00

How do these kinds of incredibly cool things keep happening to me? First one of my favourite uncles (also a physicist, btw) turns out to be a close college friend of Avery Brooks, and now one of my favourite online people turns out to be friends with one of the best british comedians of all time?

For those of you who do not know who Lenny Henry is, I could talk for hours about the comedic genius behind 'The Lenny Henry Show' and especially Chef! but instead I'll just point you here. Buy that box set. And if you are feeling generous, buy me one as well.

If you are any kind of fan of the kind of sarcastic british humor present in shows like Fawlty Towers you should love this. It is one of my lifelong dreams to be able to insult another human being with that level of eloquence. Not exactly discovering gravity, but it'll be fine with me.

Geek sidenote: Roger Griffiths, who played the character of Everton in Chef! also appeared in Batman begins as the cop talking to Gordon and his partner when they arrive at Arkham Asylum. That was a cool moment for me that not too many people got.

Other sidenote: I missed the audiobook link for chapter one of Ananse Boys. As I am a huge Neil Gaiman fan could someone please send me a copy?

Strengths I forget I have

2005-08-24T02:15:00.000-04:00

I used to be scared of the dark.

As a child there was nothing scarier to me than the absence of light. I always had a very active imagination, especially back then. Couple that with the standard stories every Ghanaian kid hears about witches, ghosts, evil spirits etc. and its not too hard to imagine what type of nighttime horrors I was coming up with to keep myself awake.

Somewhere along the line my father found out about this. I can't remember if I told him or if he just figured out that I was scared of going to sleep. Either way, I remember us talking about it, and him telling me that the fear was just in my head and telling me that I could either stand up to it or be afraid of the dark for the rest of my life.

Then I remember night after night when I'd go into the bathroom (the only place in the house where I could get any privacy) turn off the lights and just sitting there getting to know my demons.

It worked. Today I actually like the dark. I function as well at night as I do in the daytime. And I discovered I have really good night vision.

Somedays I need to remind myself that I'm still that same kid. A little older and with a new set of demons, but just as capable of facing them now as I was then

The need for certainty

2005-08-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

Another post inspired by that colossal procrastination machine I call Okayplayer.

I had the evolution vs creation argument again this week. Actually, more than once. In the process of those arguments though, I came to realize a fundamental truth about mindsets I consider intolerant, whether religious or secular.

Sidenote: Although it is not said often enough, the legions of atheists and 'skeptics' who spend every waking moment not just pointing out inconsistencies in religions but believing that they have truly found the only way are guilty of the same hubris they charge religious extremists with. Namely believing that their way is the only way. The choice to believe in no god at all is just that, a choice. Since science, which a lot of them deify without understanding, IMO, makes no statements either way about the existence of a god, any arguments for either side are philosophical in nature and have little to do with proof. If you take a stand on either side you do it out of faith.

Now, there tends to be the same core mindet behind the wholesale unquestioning embrace of any particular religion, philosophy, political party, economic system etc. Namely, the idea of certainty. A group of ideas that can not be questioned and which are always appropriate regardless of the context in which they are applied.

Now, personally, I tend to apply certain aspects of the scientific method to real life. Particularly the part that requires that we consider all ideas subject to change. Also the part which requires we honestly admit what we do not know. I've always believed that before any kind of learning can happen, I must be prepared to admit my ignorance. This is not to say that I've never been ashamed to admit ignorance, or gotten my ego tangled around an idea to the point that I was unwilling to change it, but I try.

I see the need for absolute unshakeable certainty in anything as a very dangerous thing. You have to wonder how much of the ugliness in human history could have been prevented by someone just considering the possibility that their beliefs could be wrong. Its impossible to empathize with another human being so long as you believe only your perspective has validity.

Thank you Pam!

2005-08-09T00:51:00.000-04:00

I would have done this sooner but the house hasn't had internet access for a week and I've been too busy when I'm on campus to post from there.

About a week ago, I came home to find an Amazon.com package with my name on it. This was really surprising to me since I hadn't ordered anything from them recently. Upon opening it, I found a copy of 'King Leopold's Ghost' which was on my wish list. When I checked the invoice I noticed that it was from the always fascinating Pam over at And We Shall March. Honestly, I was speechless That was the nicest thing someone had done for me in a long while. Especially since we only know each other in the context of what we write in our individual blogs and the comments we make to each other. Well, mostly the comments you make to me.

The book itself is remarkably well written and researched. It takes a particularly sordid period of world history and presents it in a straightforward but really engaging manner. I'm not yet done with it but have absolutely no issues recommending it based on what I've read so far.

Just so you know Pam, I am deeply grateful for the gesture and it is one that I shall remember for a long time. I'll also buy a copy of your anthology and review it on here. Actually I was going to do that anyway. I have a weakness for westerns.

While we're talking books, how is 'Amazons of Black Sparta'? I'm considering sliding it in among my textbook list for the semester.

Another Book post: Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation

2005-07-19T00:58:00.000-04:00

The other thing I've been reading recently is Rayvon Fouche's Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation. It takes a look at the lives of three turn of the century Black American inventors, Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer and Shelby H. Davidson.

The greatest thing about this book is its scope and the depth of research that obviously went into writing it. Fouche isn't happy with just rattling off a list of inventions and the circumstances under which they occurred. Instead there is a detailed look at the circumstances surrounding the life of each inventor. This ends up involving the most detailed historical account of turn of the century upper class, educated Black America that I have ever come across. He also goes into great detail about the personal politics of each inventor and their engagement, or lack thereof, in the civil rights movement. Its interesting how little has changed philosophically a century later. In the end, we get a living, breathing image of these men and the world in which they lived that is absolutely fascinating. For anyone with an interest in history its a great read.

Another Comic Book Post: Fierce

2005-07-18T01:13:00.000-04:00

This weekend, I ended up in New York City hanging out with an old friend. While I was there I passed by Midtown comics specially to see if they had a copy of the Fierce Trade paperback. Fierce is a product of Ghettosake comics(link in sidebar), the brainchild of brothers Robert and Jeremy Love.

The plot is action movie fare. Actually, the entire movie has an espionage thriller type feel. It would work great as a movie. Jamaican-born psychic Jonathan Fierce work for Razor, a special FBI unit. Someone betrays the unit and they all end up dead except for him. In their search for vengeance, the former members of his team all lend him their skills, turning him into a world class shot, hacker, martial artist, explosives expert and driver. With these new skills he returns to Kingston to find out who betrayed his team and exact bloody revenge. As with any good story, there is also a romance between him and the FBI psychiatrist assigned to help him deal with his psychic visions.

The writing is pretty much what you'd expect for something this action oriented. Its enough to develop the characters and make us empathize with them, but not so much that it interferes with the action. The great things about this book are the art and the action scenes. Every single panel is beautifully drawn. Honestly, I can skip the words and just enjoy the images. That's really rare for me. Usually I'm more about the writing than the art. As for the action, like I said before its more than ready for the big screen. I was really impressed with how well the scenes were imagined. I'm guessing the brothers are both huge film buffs. Either way, this takes up a well deserved spot in my collection and I have no qualms about recommending it to anyone.

Sidenote: Below is the cover of Ghettosake's next project, Chocolate Thunder. Its supposed to be a mesh of blaxploitation and martial arts movies on page. Personally, I can't wait.
I also picked up the first issue of Kyle Baker's latest project, Nat Turner. Seeing this art makes me wonder why he was unable to turn out work like this for Marvel's 'Truth' miniseries

My long awaited bookreview

2005-07-06T02:08:00.000-04:00

I was supposed to get this out a week ago. I've already finished two other books and am working on a third. This still remains so far the best book I've read this year so I owe it some publicity.

"The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad" is the first published work by black Canadian radio personality Minister Faust. You'll find a link to his blog on the right. I first came across this book while reading Nalo Hopkinson's blog a while back. I kept meaning to pick it up but then school started up and left me with almost no time for anything else. This summer, my local Borders had it on display so I scooped it up and was sucked in straight away. Of course with recommendations by Sheree Thomas, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes and Nalo Hopkinson I really should have expected that.

The plot is basically about the coyote kings, two friends named Hamza and Yehat. Yehat is an engineering genius who builds remarkable inventions as a hobby and yet works as a video store clerk. Hamza is a brilliant writer who got kicked out of college just shy of his english degree and now works as a dishwasher. In their spare time they run a school of sorts for the kids in their extremely racially diverse neighborhood. They're both damaged in their own ways, but they are always there for each other. Into this weird frindship comes Sherem, a mysterious woman who hamza immediately falls for and who leads them both through a wild and supremely entertaining adventure.

So...... what do I like about this book? Well for one, its written by a fanboy who isn't ashamed to be a fanboy. Its chock full of references to Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, RPG's, comics, De Niro movies and lots of other nerd pop culture icons. In addition to that, it unashamedly afrocentric in its focus and setting. As much as most SF fans would deny it, a vast majority of the genre is written with western perspective. This book is one of the few out there that considers things from a different cultural context altogether. Although I have slight issues with the focus on Egypt that tends to dominate popular afrocentric thought I still like the idea of other cultures getting a chance at the spotlight. Above all though, its just very well written and is one of the few books I've read recently that made me feel the emotions it was trying to convey. If for no other reason than that, its worth the money.

Sidenote: I was surprised to see that this wasn't published by Warner Aspect (long stary. Anyone who was around during the 'race and science fiction' discussion on Steven Barnes' blog knows what I'm talking about) Hopefully this means I can expect more mainstream recognition for black writers in the genre.

Short absence

2005-07-04T23:35:00.000-04:00

I've been gone for the last couple of days seeing to some friends and my father as well as doing a little bit of entertaining and installing 64-bit gentoo linux on my computer. I'm back to my daily posting schedule now though. Interestingly enough, the more I write, the more there is to write. The writer's block is definitely gone now. so the plan is to keep going until I run out of ideas. First there's a book review I know Tiel has been waiting for, then I'll start sorting through other things I want to talk about. Definitely expect a post on anime, one on my increasing loathing of what passes for media in this country and at least one on the conclusions I have come to in about half a decade of martial arts practice. That one I'm hoping people will pick apart and tell me if I'm headed in the wrong direction.

Tomorrow then people.

Day 4: By special demand, The Beer Wall

2005-06-30T17:59:00.000-04:00

Ever since i got my first apartment, I've kept a bottle from any alcoholic beverages (usually beer) that I buy and consume at home. About once a year or so, I take a picture of the collection that has built up. I figure its a good conversation piece plus its a great way to track how my tastes have changed with time. Here's what two different years look like.

June 2004

This was a crappy picture I took with a camera phone. From left to right, we have

A bottle of port (can't remember which brand)
This I bought as a graduation giftfor a couple of close friends. It was just sitting there until I took it over.

Dos Equis
A decent mexican import. A step above Corona but not quite at the lofty heights that others in the collection acheve in terms of taste. When I can't find the stuff I really want it makes a good substitute.

Jim Beam bottled Jack&Coke
In my defence, I had guests coming over when I bought a six pack of that and the Jack Daniels version two bottles over. That being said, they weren't bad. Since all drinking activities at home don't involve me getting drunk they are a good substitute for days you don't feel like a beer.

Goya Malta
Not alcoholic, just something I enjoy drinking. One of the side benefits of always living in the 'ethnic' parts of town is that I've never had issues finding stores that carry 10 different brands of the stuff. My favourite remains Malta Guiness, which is pretty hard to find outside of speciality African stores.

Heineken
Aah, Heineken, the default import beer of choice for most people who actuallylike to drink beer, instead of chugging it in the hopes of getting drunk before you fill up. Incidentally, why do people do that. If you're trying to get drunk as fast as possible, take shots of the strongest liquor you can find. If you actually like to taste what you drink, find a good beer. Anyway, back to heineken. For a long time this was my beer of choice until it was unseated by another beer on that rack, which was in turn unseated by a beer on this year's rack.

Corona
In my early beer drinking days, before I knew any better, I was a huge fan. Now its something I only but reluctantly for mixed company. I guess I've run across so much better that's its been steadily falling down the ladder.

Bitburger
This beer is currently tied with Spaten Premium (no pictures, sorry) as my favourite beer when I don't want something darker. Great tasting, but unfortunately fairly hard to find. I used to shop at a Trader Joe's that carried them. Great way to unwind.

Smirnoff Ice
This, I'll admit to buying for myself. I like the taste, so sue me.

So that was last year. Since then I've been drinking even less (those were accumulated over an entire year) and have developed a taste for darker beers. Which brings us to this year's much shorter list

June 2005

As you can tell, I've been drinking very little of late. Also, Flavour has become more imortant to me, hence the shift to darker beers. From right to left, we have

Mike's Hard Lemonade
This is part of a set my brother gave me for helping him move out of his apartment. He didn't have any space so I got them. I must admit to liking the taste though.

Dos Equis Amber
A decent dark beer. If I can't find the other two to the left of it, it makes a reasonable substitute. It does, however, fall a little short in the taste department.

Negra Modelo
My favourite mexican beer and second favourite dark beer. The name and bottle alone are distinctive enough to get it noticed and it tastes great in addition,

Spaten Optimator
My absolute favourite beer on the planet. Nothing out there that I've run across beats the taste of this German dark beer. Apparently Its a product of the first brewery ever established in Munich and honestly it shows. If you're any kind of fan of darker beers, you owe it to yourself to try this. Between it and a good book or movie, any stresses in your life can be handled.

Day 3: Library books

2005-06-29T23:39:00.000-04:00

I finally got a library card today. Its sad that I've been living in Newark for almost a year and it took me this long. Pretty much every place I've lived I have spent a little too much time in libraries. The Newark library is a little weird. For one thing its obviously underfunded when compared to other American libraries I have seen. Since I have some time on my hands this week, This is what I picked up

1. Richard K. Morgan - Broken Angels(already done)

I read his first book 'Altered Carbon' maybe a year ago and was really intrigued by the basic idea of a world where immortality can be bought and people's digitized consciousness transferred across space to be downloaded into engineered bodies. This is the second in the series, keeping the same main character Takeshi Kovacs, sort of an interplanetary mercenary, and using him to explore another world. I need to find the rest of this series. I enjoy them

2. Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness

As a long time fan of both science fiction and Ursula Leguin, I am ashamed to admit that I have not fully read this book *collective gasp from the crowd*. Yes people, I have revealed to you my secret shame . I must now resign from the society of sci-fi biblioholics until I finish this book. Especially since it popularly considered her best work.

3. Samuel R. Delany - Trouble on Triton

Continuing with my aim to read everything Delany has ever written, I will finish another of his works this week. Hope its good

4. Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

I first became aware of him when he started writing the Papa Midnight Comicbook series. Generelly speaking, I liked his writing so i decided to check out his books. I'll let you know how it goes.

5. Rayvon Fouche - Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation

This book follows the lives and achievements of three black inventors ion the 1800's/early 1900's and chronicles their inventions and the setbacks they faced. As a physicist/tinkerer I enjoy this kinds of stories.

6. Terry Pratchett - Monstrous Regiment

Perhaps the only pratchett book I haven't read. I am really looking forward to this, especially since his writing has yet to disappoint me

Day Two: Kwasi's martial arts past (part 2)

2005-06-28T15:38:00.000-04:00

When we left off, I had just given up on the Aikido club since it became the refuge of people who either wanted to play at being Japanese (asiaphiles, really sad people) or just wanted to sound cool by telling people they were learning Aikido. Both groups were experts at whining over the least bit of discomfort and so they gradually sucked out any semblance of hard training from the group so a bunch of us left.

It just so happened that around this time, a little group calling itself OMAI (Oberlin Martial Arts Initiative, horrible name I know) was looking for new members. It was more of a free sharing space where people from dozens of different backgrounds hung out, trained together and taught each other stuff. I'll call the two guys who ran the group poser and sifu. Poser was just that, the worst example of a martial arts poser I have ever met. Imagine someone who'd read hundreds of books and gone to a few seminars but had no real steady experience outside of a couple of barfights acting as though he was an expert and you'll have a good idea. Basically Mushtaq minus all his life experiences and everything else that makes him interesting. Sifu, on the other hand, is the real deal. When I met him, he was a black belt in American kempo, a senior student at a close by kajukenbo school and had years of misc. training in longfist and excrima(his mother's family is Filipino). As of now, He's a second dan in kenpo, first in kajukenbo, a BJJ blue belt and just opened up a school in a suburb outside New Your City. I apparently have free sparring priviledges any time I want to pass by.

Among the people who trained there were the aikido refugees, refugees from the karate club and people with backgrounds in japanese and brazillian jujitsu, hung gar, tai chi, wing chin, jkd concepts, hapkido and muay thai. We worked lots of basics, learned some forms and spent a air amount of time sparring under several different rulesets. Everything from grappling to sticks to rubber knives to clinch work. It was hard and sometimes brutal but great fun. Eventually we got rid of poser and the club lost a couple of less motivated people, which was fine with the rest of us. I stuck with them for the rest of my college years. Some people came and went but it remained a pretty solid group where i learned a lot. In that time, we had a fairly well known capoiera teacher come through and then a brazillian foreign exchange student who had been training since childhood so I took the opportunity to pick up a decent amount of both capoera regional and angola. I plan to get back to it some day.

After college I was inactive for a while then I moved to NJ to live with my brother, look for a job and decide what I wanted to do with my life. There, by a weird turn of events I ended up studying dachengquan, northern mantis and hsing-yi with the teacher I am currently returning to. His main focus was on breath and alignment so we spent hours in standing and moving meditation. In his opinion, what separated styles were differences in 'flavor' and combat philosophy. The ability to remain calm, maintain proper alignment and generate power through intergrating breath and movement was the true skill to aim for regardless of the style you practiced. His methods seemed to work for me, so I see no reason not to stick to them for now.

Anyway, I ended up going back to Cleveland for a year during which time all sorts of weird stuff happened in the family and I hit a brick wall with regards to training and school. Now I'm slowly getting back into the game. As far as objectives go, I want to learn as much as I can and get better control of my body and mind. Plus I really want to get in more competition practice while I'm still young enough so getting banged up is not an issue. Now that Mushtaq is relatively close, I might drive or take the train up that way sometime so he can toss me around a little. I'm also paying close attention so Scott Sonnon's work since people I hold in high regard hold him in high regard.

I'll probably talk about specific training in my fitness post coming sometime this week.

Day one: Kwasi's history with the Martial arts (Part 1)

2005-06-27T18:27:00.000-04:00

The post that plunged me into full scale writer's block. This is going to involve parts of my childhood which weren't necessarily pleasant, hence the reason I have been finding any and all reasons not to post on it. Its a good thing I told people it was coming, otherwise I'd duck it today too. The story starts from waay before I ever began seriously training. I could skip ahead, but then you'd be missing a large chunk of the story and the stuff in my head I'm trying to flush out, which is one of the purposes of this blog.

This story starts with me entering junior secondary school (junior high for the Americans). I skipped two classes in primary school so I was probably one of the smallest kids in an incoming class of about 300 people, and I was one of the smarter kids too, which really didn't help things. Suffice it to say that bu the time my three years were up, I had learned how to run, take a punch and keep my mouth shut. By the time I left I had made enough bigger friends so people left me alone. I had also learned a very important lesson. It doesn't matter if you are the more rational or the one with better ideas if the other guy can still just beat you up. Pacifism is nice but it only works if everyone does it. In the real world, some people choose to be predators and unless you have the means to fight them off, you always run the risk of being prey. Therefore, for me, one of the purposes of all my MA training has always been effectiveness.

From junior high I tested into a fairly exclusive private secondary school. Switching educational systems dropped me back a year so I was closer in age to my peers, though still the youngest. Since puberty kicked in late for me, I was still one of the smaller people and still one of the smarter ones, so the cycle repeated itself. At that point I was also really physically and socially awkward. I barely had enough confidence to look anyone in the face, which didn't help matters any. Things got better, I found friends. learned how to avoid most of those who didn't like me and just blend in. Puberty hit, I shot up a couple of inches and got tired of being a target. I started reading every thing I could on martial arts and exercising like crazy. In my last year there, one of my tormentors caught me on a bad day, I lost it and slammed him into a concrete post. Not particularly something I'm proud of, but it got me some peace once people realized I was strong enough to fight back. I got tested a couple of more times but generally people started to let me be.

The insecurity and anger from those days is something I still carry around these days. The reason I wanted to learn martial arts was partly some kind of Charles Atlas type fantasy of being able to confront my tormentors and beat the crap out of them. In my head I knew that was the wrong attitude to have but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that a part of me wanted an excuse to be violent, preferably in defence of myself or someone else, so I wouldn't feel as weak or as frail. Somewhere inside me there's still a little kid scared of the bigger people around him and looking for a reason to lash out. In someways I've gotten past that need, in other ways I haven't.

So, what did I actually study? Well, in college it started with Aikido. I suspect one of the reasons I started there was my better nature looking for a less outwardly violent way to deal with my fears. Either that or Steven Segal movies. In the winter term of my freshman year I was signed up for two 2 hour classes a day, six days a week. Oberlin has a pretty old club that is affiliated with the Cleveland Aikikai, which was ironically founded by Oberlin alumni. That winter they were hosting a travelling sensei whose name I'm ashamed to say I can't remember. He was my first real teacher. His focus was heavily on basics. Hundreds of rolls and falls daily and long hours of randori where he stressed moving from your center, remaining mobile at all times and 'blending' with your opponents force. He was also pretty open to the use of atemi as set ups for throws and locks. It was long hours of fairly intense work and I loved it. After winter term he moved on and was replaced by a series of instructors from Cleveland or the school club. The quality of training fell quickly as the club became more and more accomodating of people who wanted to say they were doing aikido without actually doing any hard work. I pretty much left the club at this point. I continued to train with them on and off because I was friends with those in charge, but it got too 'nice' for me.

Part 2 of the story tomorrow kids, plus a special post on one of my favourite topics, Beer

Summer preview

2005-06-27T00:57:00.000-04:00

I've been having a wierd case of writer's block recently. One single post has been taking me almost a week to get out. I suspect this is because of the emotions attached to the parts of my past I'll be exploring. To try and get out of it, I'm just going to set myself a schedule and make sure I spend at least half an hour a day doing nothing but blogging. That means I need topics. I plan to do this for at least a week so lets assume a minimum of 7, maybe more. Depending on how this goes, I might just stick to a regular daily schedule.

Anyway, the topics you will be reading about this week include:

Martial arts
For something that has been (and is rapidly becoming again) a large part of my life, I'm very hesitant to talk about it in public. This is actually the post that caused my writers block. Hopefully being open about it here will help deal with its associated demons from my past. Plus, a large chunk of my active readership are people who have so much more experience than I do. I need to pick their minds more.

Family
My parents are in town and as usual, it is proving interesting. They just recently started treating me as an adult, which is so incredibly wierd and gratifying all at once. My father will be here for a week where I will have a flexible enough schedule to spend most of it with him. I expect that there will be some passing off fatherly advice over dark beer.

Book Review
I just finished reading Minister Faust's "The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad". Actually, I finished it almost a week ago. Loved it. Geeky and bohemian. I'll definitly be looking forward to his next book.

Sexuality
Another topic I'm learning to be more open about. I don't know where this one will go. I'm open to questions or suggestions though

The workout plan
This has seen some changes, and will probably see more as I learn more about my body and exercise science in general. I'll just outline my fitness/dietary goals and where I am now.

I'll probably come up with more stuff. I can usually find something to talk about. All questions and suggestions are appreciated. Help me help myself people.

Batman Begins

2005-06-18T21:09:00.000-04:00

I've seen this movie twice since opening day. Once by myself and again with the geek crew (two of my brother's friends, both engineers and comic book geeks). I can honestly say its tied with Spider Man for best comic book movie. Then again, I'm biased.

Batman has always been my favourite comic book character, followed closely by Spider Man. Its really not that hard to understand why if you've ever met me. Batman has no powers. He's just a normal man who has developed his mind and his body to the absolute best of their potential. Granted, he's an emotional cripple, but he still represents the potential inherent in a trained, disciplined body and mind to accomplish great things. Kind of the reason I've always been a fan.

Sidenote: How many times is Morgan Freeman going to have to take a minor character and make him into someone memorable before hollywood gets the message that he deserves much bigger and better roles? Lucius Fox is a minor character at best in the comics. However, in the movie, he is transformed into someone as important to the story as Alfred, in no small part because of Mr. Freeman's acting skills

Tag, I'm it

2005-06-09T21:41:00.000-04:00

I just picked up another meme courtesy of Mushtaq,

1. Total number of books I've owned:

Overall, between textbooks and stuff I bought for my own enjoyment, probably close to a thousand. I refuse to count comic books on the grounds that the total number would scare me

2. Last book I bought:

Non school or comic related,

Steve Perry - 'Black Steel'

Aaron Mcgruder, Reginald Hudlin and Kyle Baker - 'Birth of a Nation'

I bought them together

3. Last book I read:

Jess O'Brien - Nei Jia Quan: Internal Martial Arts : Teachers of Tai Ji Quan, Xing Yi Quan, and Ba Gua Zhang

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:

(in no particular order)

Musashi - The Book of 5 Rings

David Eddings - Belgarath the Sorceror

Isaac Asimov - Caves of Steel

Ayi Kwei Armah - The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Richard Feynman - What Do You Care What Other People Think

I would pass this on to

Pam

Jef

SB

Random 10

2005-06-08T22:50:00.000-04:00

I have such a huge (and growing) music collection that these days unless I really feel like listening to something in particular, I use Amarok's '50 random songs' feature to decide what I'll be listening to. Its proving to be a great way to explore my collection. Since a couple of blogs I read feature 'random 10' lists, I figured, why not. So, my first 'random 10' list.

Sidenote: Amarok is easily the best media player I have seen on any OS. And its a Linux app! The future approaches.

1. Aaliyah - 4 Page Letter
2. Zero 7 - When It Falls
3. Thelonius Monk - Hornin'in (alt. take)
4. Santessa - Phased
5. Soul Position - Candyland pt. 3
6. Talib Kweli - I Try
7. Outkast - My Favourite Things
8. DJ Spinna - Surely
9. Maxwell - Everwanting: To Want You To Want
10. Floetry - Say Yes

Mr. Nice Guy

2005-06-06T01:40:00.000-04:00

I spent a large chunk of this evening involved in a futile and somewhat irritating discussion on Okayplayer (which, incidentally takes up way too much of my spare time) on the issue of the idea that 'nice guys finish last'. This was an issue I had planned to discuss on this blog at some point. Since its fresh in my mind now, and I'm frustrated at people on both sides of the fence for refusing to own up to their side's complicity or consider points of view other than their own I figured, time to write it down so I can get it out of my system and sleep better. Here goes.

The complaint is that nice guys, here taken to be quieter, more soft spoken men who treat their women as human beings rather than ambulatory sex toys, generally lose out to the 'bad boys'. They are stereotypically louder, more arrogant and more inclined to treat their women with minimal amounts of respect. Now. my reasoning here may offend some men and women equally. If you are one of the offended, I apologize. I'm here to tell the truth as I see it. If you think I'm wrong anywhere, please feel free to call me on it. Last time I checked I was far from the ultimate authority on human interaction.

Lets start off with a bit of harsh truth. Both men and women generally make incredibly wrongheaded and idiotic decisions about love/dating/mating, usually due to blindly following societal standards without ever stopping to think through whether or not those standards make sense for them. Hypermasculine, arrogant men have always been put on a pedestal as the male ideal. Don't believe me? I invite you to spend time watching male images in television, movies, music or any other aspect of pop culture. Women have certain specific ideals of appropriate female appearance and behavior. Men follow the appropriate female image even when they either have no chance of obtaining said woman or would be unhappy with the result if they were to obtain said woman, a point I attempted to make in my 'know your audience' post. Women make exactly the same mistakes in the other direction, all going after the portrayed masculine ideal, with all the problems it embodies.

Basically the problem nice guys have is that we are not what pop culture considers manly, no way around that. Accept that you aren't cool in that way and probably never will be. Also, stop chasing the socially constructed ideal for a second and figure out what truly works for the person you are. If you don't like who you are, change or go into therapy to learn to love you. Whoever you end up as, look for who fits that person. Women, the same applies. If your last 5 boyfriends treated you like hell, you might want to take a step back, figure out why you want those men, who you are and which men actually make sense for you.

That being said, there is something nice guys need to do. In the immortal words of Denzel Washington, man the f$&% up. There is a difference between confidence and arrogance, between assertiveness and obnoxiousness. We tend to not be comfortable in who we are partly because we sense that we aren't 'sexy'. This lack of confidence hurts us. It keeps us from stepping honest with ourselves and women about who we are and what we want. I've been guilty of this more times than I'm comfortable admitting. Its something I'm still working on. Its something we all need to work on. At the end of the day, the only definitions of who we are that should matter are those we make for ourselves.

Black Comic book characters: Blackjack

2005-06-05T23:12:00.000-04:00

For those of you who have been reading this blog since the beginning, my reasons for making a post, or series of posts even, on blacks in comic books will not be hard to understand. For the rest of you, take a look here. Incidentally, there will also be similar posts concerning science fiction and I still need to address the entire 'white male power fantasy' issue.

The subject of today's post is the gentleman in the picture above carrying a rather large gun, which he uses rather frequently throughout the book. He's Aaron Day, otherwise known as Blackjack. A soldier of fortune and explorer in the same pulp vein as Indiana Jones and Alan Quartermain, except he's also an educated, wealthy black man in the 1930's, with all the problems that brings. I own several Blackjack comic books but today we'll restrict ourselves to the 'Blood and Honor' graphic novel since, as far as I know, its the only one that's easily available.

In this book, Blackjack and his Chinese indentured servant(yep, you read that right) head to Japan and then China to protect the life of a Japanese minister against the more militant elements of his own government. In the middle of all the predictable violence. Aaron must also come to terms with the fact that he effectively owns another human being. There are several other subtexts to the book which I can't reveal without spoiling the book. I'll just assure you that it is action packed, really well drawn and deals with a lot of issues you will rarely ever find in comic books. If you get a chance, pick it up. you won't be disappointed.

Sidenote: Blackjack's writer, Alex Simmons, was responsible for the creation of Orpheus, the first compelling take I saw of a black character in a Batman book since Steven Barnes' 'Underground Railroad' story arc. Unfortunately every subsequent batman character had no idea what to do with him so he was depowered, shuffled aside and then killed off. An action that brought to an end my support of all bat-related titles besides Gotham Central and Gail Simone's run on Birds of Prey

Keeping things in perspective

2005-06-02T01:27:00.000-04:00

A couple of days ago, I was tolking to a lovely young lady (who shall remain nameless) when the topic of discussion ended up becoming my sense that I have been working below my pontential. I realized that a large part of that is my lack of perspective on my achievements.

I've developed this incredibly unhealthy habit of paying attention to my failures instead of my successes and letting them weigh me down. For instance, I'm working on getting myself back into fighting shape (bodyweight exercises, lots of basics and single movement work, standing meditation) and trying to study for my phd qualifiers. Increasingly, whenever I have a hard time getting started, miss a training session or miss a study session its because I'm remembering times when I failed to get things done in the past. I basically psych myself out by assuming that, since i messed up before I will again. This probably ties into the fact that I have never really been secure in my abilities. Why? well I could speculate on the reason but it wouldn't change the fact that I need to get used to the idea of paying attention to the things I do right and using my missteps/failures as learning tools instead of instruments to punish myself with.

In order to get here, I forged ahead and succeeded more times than I fell back and failed. I have worked long hours through serious hardship on my body, my mind and my soul. Somehow, I 've never really appreciated that part of me. That was a huge mistake I must now make an effort to rectify.

This also means that I have to learn how to let go of the fear of seeming arrogant that drives me to false modesty without simultaneously losing track of all I have left to do. True humulity isn't found in lying to everyone, including yourself, about what you are capable of. Instead it is found in being absolutely honest with yourself about all your strengths and weaknesses. Including those you are afraid to admit to yourself or to other people. Since I already know this, I just need to do it. But that discussion is for another post.

Science Fiction that shaped my childhood

2005-05-29T23:38:00.000-04:00

Whenever I start getting to know people, at some point the issue of my love of Science Fiction and Fantasy always comes up at some point. Apparently I don't exactly look like someone you'd expect to be a fan of the genre, whatever that means, Anyway, I grew up on the genre, and dozens of others. A large chunk of my childhood was spent reading everything I could possibly get my hands on. I stuck with SF for several reasons, among them being that I have a heavily overdeveloped imagination and a tendency to ask questions. The strength of the genre is its ability to create new worlds from scratch and also to ask deeply fundamental questions about this one. A great science fiction story is one that does both. So, without ado, the SF books that influenced me as a kid. As a tribute to 'High Fidelity' which I rewatched this weekend, I'll make it a top 5 list.

Incidentally, as soon as I made this list, I thought about other books that have fair claim to being on this list. I guess I'll have to do another one at some point.

1. Isaac Asimov's 'The Caves of Steel'

For those of you who have no idea who Asimov is, shame on you. He is easily one of the greatest SF and general science writers of all time. If it weren't for him, I would probably have ended up as a history major instead of a physicist. He's also the only stranger whose death I can honestly say I was affected by. The recent 'I Robot' movie was an entertaining perversion of his most enduring creation, the three laws of robotics. One of these days, you guys will get a post solely dedicated to him, but for now, I'll stick to the script.

When people talk about his works, They usually consider the 'Foundation' books or his Robot stories to be his best work. Me, I've always been partial to the Elijah Bailey and Daneel Olivaw books, perhaps because they combine good detective stories with very effective commentary on race. This is the first in the series.

In Asimov's fictional future, humanity is split up into 'Earthers', human beings bound to the planet earth, and 'Spacers', a spacefaring group who have longer lives and access to better technology, like robots. Urbanization plus population growth means that most earthers live in ultra large cities from which the book derives its name.

One of the main characters, Elijah Bailey, is an earther police officer who hates spacers and robots equally. When a high ranking spacer is murdered, he gets assigned to the case. Because of the sensitivity if this case, however, the spacers insist he take along a robot partner, Daneel Olivaw, a robot made in the image of the dead man. The rest of the book is part detective story, as they track down the murderer, and partly about the nature of prejudice, as Elijah is forced to confront his feelings, and those of general Earther society, about both Spacers and robots. To a certain degree, the two of them even bond and form a sort of friendship.

2. Ursula K. LeGuin's 'A Wizard of Earthsea'

Ursula Leguin's most beloved series. I still remember the first time I read this book. Actually, it was just the first chapter. It was part of an anthology of SF short stories that a girl I liked 'liberated' from her parents bookshelf for me (sidenote, I wonder what happened to her?). I remember reading it over and over, instantly drawn in by the images her words created.

Oh, for the record, I will not be discussing the Scifi channel's whitewashed and destroyed show that was supposedly based on this book. Ursula said it better than I ever could and I really don't need to get agitated today.

The basic story has to do with the growth of the main character, Sparrowhawk. Through him, we learn valuable life lessons. Among them, that power is only to be used in moderation, unless the situation demands it and that in all people there exists both the good and the bad, and they are both necessary to balance each other out. The other great thing about this book, which was apparently missed by a lot of people, was the fact that Sparrowhawk and his people weren't white. As a woman in the genre, Ursula became sensitive to the fact that a lot of science fiction was little more than a space for the heroic white male power fantasy. In response, she made her protagonist Native American as her way of challenging that perception (BTW, the entire idea of white male power fantasies in SF and comic books is one I shall revisit sometime soon).

3. Arthur C. Clarke's 'Rendezvous with Rama'

Arthur C. Clarke, allegedly the R-Kelly/Michael Jackson of SF writers (along with Piers Anthony, if the rumors are true). This is the man who invented the concept of the geosynchronous satellite. One of the things that always interested me about him was the fact that he was actually a practicing physicist for a large part of his life and it tended to show in the small scientific details in his books.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking, why not '2001'? Why 'Rama', which isn't anywhrer near as well known? Simple. This is my list and as a kid I enjoyed reading Rendevous with Rama far more than I enjoyed 2001 which, in my opinion, has a tendency to be overrated because of the brilliant Kubrick movie. Maybe, if Morgan Freeman gets his way and the Rama movie gets made it'll finally get the respect it deserves.

The story behind it is fairly simple. In the near future a cylindrical object enters our solar system. After it becomes obvious that there is nothing natural about it, a team if investigators are sent into space to explore it and figure out what its doing here. Once they get there, they find that its hollow and contains a small city. The rest of the book is mainly about their attempts to figure out the purpose of Rama, as they decide to call it.

What made this book great for me was the fact that it seamlessly merged 'hard' science with good storytelling without compromising either. It was also one of the first books I read to step away from the paradigm of the humanoid alien and seriously allow for the possibility that life could exist in forms that we can't possibly imagine. While this also holds true for his 2001 books, I always preferred the execution in these better.

4. Frank Herbert's ''

Frank Herbert was a genius. There is little more to it than that. In the 'Dune' books, he created a huge, painskaingly detained world and then used it to tell great stories while meditating on a wide range of issues including religion, politics and ecology. I could probably ramble on about his work for hours if given a chance. The books were incredibly dense in terms of themes explored and yet they were entertaining enough to spawn movies, spinoff books and video games. Honestly, I still don't remember if I saw the movie first or read the book. It really doesn't matter either way. Both hold a very special place in my childhood.

5. Douglas Adams' 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'

What can I possibly say about these books that will do them justice. Douglas Adams still remains, in my mind, one of the funniest human beings to ever pick up a pen. Actually, I blame my sometimes quirky sense of humor squarely on him. Since the movie just came out, you probably don't really need me to explain the basic premise behind the story to you. I'll just say that this book was responsible for many hours of enjoyment for me as a kid. I always related to Arthur Dent, the person who never quite fit in anywhere. Watching him grow and learn was a great thing for me.

Incidentally, it holds a very special place for me because of a link to the very first girl to break my heart. Long story but basically we took turns checking it out of the school library and spent long hours talking about it (I wasn't lying when I said I like geeks. Always have)

Anyway, thus concludes my list. Considering what else could have been on this list, I'll probably have to make another one soon.

Random musings

2005-05-26T20:46:00.000-04:00

1. I've been listening to Common's new album 'Be' almost exclusively since it was released on Tuesday. In my opinion its an early candidate for album of the year. Granted, at 11 tracks its not the longest CD you'll ever hear but every track is quality. From what I hear its also shaping up to be his highest selling album to date. I'm really happy for him, Especially after the violently negative reception his last album 'Electric Circus' received. Personally I liked Electric Circus, still do. The exploratory nature of its production really turned people off though, unfortunately. Ironically, most of the same people loved Andre 3000's 'The Love Below'. I can't explain it.

2. Has everyone else heard R.Kelly's latest multi-part auditory abortion? Otherwise known as 'In the Closet parts 1-3' these songs are so horrifically bad it feels like one of those really bad science fiction movies that were the staple of 'Mystery Science Theater 3000'. Its so incredibly horrible that you find yourself watching it in amazement that an actual thinking person came up with this and had the bravery to release it. From the generally positive reaction that this, and other crappy R-Kelly songs have received, I believe that he should consider giving up his singing career (well, that he should do anyway for the sake of humanity) and become a cult leader. If he can convince people that putting bad soap opera scripts to music is an act of genius, what else can he get them to do? Honestly I wish I had that gift. I'd use it to put together a harem.

3. Two of my favorite TV shows are not being renewed. The Sly Stallone reality boxing show 'The Contender' and UPN first decent prime time drama 'Kevin Hill'. For those of you who missed both if these, you missed out. Especially The Contender, which, along with Spike TV's 'The Ultimate Fighter' actually made me regularly watch reality TV. At least 'The 4400' is coming back. For those of you who haven't seen it, think 'Lost' but better.

Know your audience

2005-05-22T21:37:00.000-04:00

A while back, Swann said I should write about my views on dating/relationships. She seems to think that they are unusually wise. Personally they strike me as little more than good common sense. Either way, I have some time on my hands so I figured I'd throw something together. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, here goes.

I will be starting with a very simple but often ignored rule. Know thyself. Too many times I have seen men and women go after people who were obviously wrong for them because they couldn't be honest with themselves about who they were and what they wanted. For instance, I am a geek. I'm a physics grad student who loves science in general. I read comic books, read a lot of old and new literature, don't really listen to a lot of commercial hip-hop or R&B and love anime and cartoons in general. While I may have a slight obsession with martial arts in general, I'm not a particularly aggressive or violent person. Generally I try to treat people with respect until they give me a reason to do otherwise. I posses very few, if any, of the characteristics of the 'thug' or 'baller' types. Therefore, obviously, women who are looking for overly aggressive men to control their lives, or men who will lavish large sums of money on them aren't looking for me. It would be a waste of my time to even try talking to them. Plus, even assuming they would talk to me, how long would the conversation last before I would be willing to give up a vital organ to get them to shut up? I like discourse. I like my women intelligent, knowledgeable about a wide range of things and willing to laugh at themselves and the world around them. Therefore if I decided to hang out in places where the thugs and ballers, or, far more likely, people pretending to be them, go to look for women what are the chances I would find someone I'd actually be attracted to?

If I decided to invest my time in those women, I'd probably manage a series of horrible relationships that would end in them leaving me for someone who fits their ideals better. I'd probably end up bitter at women and believing that they are all gold diggers or want thugs. The real truth would be that I'm just not 'cool'. I never have been and honestly I have no desire to be. I would have been playing in a world I have no place in.

There, of course is the part people refuse to accept. You can choose to live like one of the 'cool' people. If you choose not to, that's not your world. Be honest with yourself about who you are and then go looking for someone who compliments that person. I love female geeks. We generally get along really well and I don't have to pretend to be someone I'm not.

So, children, the moral of this slightly confused story is, learn to be you, then go looking for someone who you are attracted to, who is attracted to the true you. Regardless of whether or not it works out it will be a lot less stress not having to hide who you are.

Religious Zealotry vs. Science

2005-05-12T00:46:00.000-04:00

I've been out of things for a little bit because of schoolwork so i missed the beginnings of the debate in Kansas. Thankfully Mushtaq has been talking about it and so between him and this blog by a grad student at the University of Kansas, I have bees speedily brought up to date. For those of you who are similarly clueless, I'll summarize. Basically, the state Board of Education in Kansas is holding hearings about whether or not to teach Intelligent Design "theory" (and I use that word extremely loosely) beside evolution in classrooms. Not being satisfied with that, they are also trying to get the school board's definition of science changed. They want to omit the part about science looking for natural explanations to phenomena so they can tie religion in to every aspect of science education. Their reasons for doing so are spelled out here.

For now, I'll ignore the larger implications of what they are doing and focus on why Intelligent Design is not a valid scientific theory and evolution is. There seems to be some confusion over the use of the word 'theory' so I'll start there. In regular english use, a theory is merely a reasonable idea. In order for an idea to qualify as a scientific theory, it must endure rigorous and ongoing challenges to its validity and must be capable of explaining all the available data as well as predicting any new data that appears on the same topic. In other words evolution is a widely accepted theory because it provides a coherent and testable explanation for everything we currently know about the history of life on earth. Certain parts of the theory are still being refined but those are the specifics. The general framework is accepted by the majority of scientists as being valid. If tomorrow we find evidence that plainly contradicts evolution, that will be the end of it and they'll start looking for a new theory that incorporates everything we now know.
Intelligent Design doesn't really explain anything. Ignoring the fact that its just a way to backdoor creationism into schools, the basic idea behind it is that nature is too complex to have come into being on its own so it must have been created. No real mention is made of the creator(s), their origin and the means by which creation took place. This 'theory' can never be tested because all contradicting data can also be ascribed to the same intelligent designer, automatically rendering it useless as a scientific theory. If there is no possible way to prove it false it can't be a scientific theory. Its defenders ignore the mountains of evidence supporting evolution and instead nitpick at areas that are still being investigated as proof that the entire theory is flawed. When they're not doing that, they make ridiculously incoherent and obviously uninformed arguments that seriously call into question their ability to think rationally about anything.

Now, lets return to the larger issue behind this, the attack on naturalism. One of the core beliefs of the scientific method is that nature follows specific rules and that we can deduce these rules by observing nature without invoking any other outside powers. The Universe, whether it was created by god or randomly came into being, follows these rules. The fact that you are sitting at a computer reading this and didn't need to utter a prayer or make a sacrifice in order to get it to work is a fairly convincing argument for this point of view. Its not that we don't believe in god, most scientists I've met have some kind of spiritual faith. Its just that we don't consider ourselves in the business of proving or disproving god's existence. Nothing about the rules of nature confirms or denies the existence of god(s). You can believe or not, just don't expect help from us either way. It wouldn't be a belief if you could prove it.
Anyway, religious zealots hate naturalism because it provides an explanation for the world that doesn't necessarily require a holy man or holy book, thus threatening their power. They want to be the ones with all the answers and if that means dismantling centuries of human scientific progress, so be it.

Personally, the people I really feel sorry for are the kids who are going to have their heads filled with all this nonsense. Someday they'll have to deal with the real world. By choosing religious dogma over reality, their parents will be doing them a disservice too great for me to properly describe. Plus, if this spreads you might as well move all science related institutions overseas because your kids will be too stupid and uninformed to man them. So either bring us here or move them to our homes and cut down on airfare. Might I suggest putting a nanotechnology R&D lab in Ghana, my parents will be glad to see me move home and I will no longer have to deal with the winter.

The insomnia comic book post

2005-05-09T02:30:00.000-04:00

My last final is tomorrow and I'm having a hard time going to sleep. At the same time, I've studied so much for this thing that my brain is about to start leaking out of my ear. Since I have nothing else to do and I'm already seated behind the computer, I figured I'd do some blogging. Since this past Saturday was free comic book day, I figured I'd let you guys know what I have been reading these days.
As you will probably notice, a lot of these are written by black writers or feature black characters. This is partially due to the fact that the writing is good and partially because I figure if I have the time to complain about the lack of representation in comics, I can put my money where my mouth is and support well written black comics. Plus I'm getting tired of the culture of sensationalism that the big two comic companies are working from these days so I'm going further afield in search of good writing and decent art. Anyway, without further ado, here is the list.

Black Panther

I was huge fan of Christopher Priest's remarkable run on Black Panther and was really unhappy when the book got cancelled. I was livid when the series he moved on to, The Crew, was cancelled without ever getting off the ground. But that's a story for another day.

The new relaunch of the Black Panther comic is being written by Reggie Hudlin, director of House Party and Boomerang as well as co-writer of the incredibly funny Birth Of A Nation. Unsurprisingly, he's proving to be one hell of a writer. So far, I have been loving every issue of the new 'Panther' and I've even managed to turn a couple of people unto the book.

For those of you who are unaware of the story behind the Black Panther, he is the monarch of Wakanda, a fictitious African country that also happens to be the most developed nation on the planet. He has no actual superhuman abilities of his own, a special herb gives him heightened strength and senses but he is mostly a superbly trained human being with access to an arsenal of the most technologically advanced equipment on the planet. Basically, Imagine a black Batman with significantly greater resources at his disposal and you'll get an idea of the potential of the character. When he was first introduced into the Marvel Universe he hunted down and captured the Fantastic Four as a test. Of course, immediately after that he spent the majority of his comic book time as a glorified cheerleader for the Avengers until Priest brought him back to life as a credible character who was always several steps ahead of his enemies. Reggie's work seems to be continuing very much in this direction and if definitely worth picking up if you're a comic fan.

Incidentally, for those interested in Priest's excellent run on the character, there are two trade paperbacks available that I highly recommend. This and this.

Angeltown

This book is the latest crime series by novelist Gary Phillips. I was actually unfamiliar with his work until I started reading rave reviews for this series. Which is sad because I'm a huge fan of crime novels. He's pretty high up on my summer reading list now.

Anyway, back to the book. Its a modern day noir-ish detective story about a private detective trying to track down a professional basketball player accused of murdering his white ex-wife (I wonder where the idea for that could have come from)
Of course, nothing is what it seems and this case ends up attracting the attention of people high up on both sides of the law leaving our detective to stay alive long enough to figure out the truth and find his man while avoiding a lesbian bounty hunter trying to snatch up the same target. Of course there's a huge amount of sex, violence and strong language, all staples of the genre. If you like crime stories you'll probably like this one. Its well paced and really well written

Ocean

I'm a huge Warren Ellis fan. I have been since Transmetropolitan, which, I believe, is one of the best critiques of the modern media I have encountered in a work of fiction. Plus the main character uses a weapon called a 'bowel disrupter' on people. Some people i know find him too cynical and suspicious of people in authority. Personally, I share a lot of his misgivings in those areas so I tend to agree with his stuff. Plus I enjoy his somewhat twisted sense of humor.

Ocean is a straightforward science fiction thriller about a UN weapons inspector who gets called to one of the moons of Jupiter when an exploration crew finds the cryogenically preserved citizens of an alien race and their weapons. Of course, it just happens that the only other people in the area are he crew of a weapons research station belonging to one of the largest corporations in the known world. This being an Ellis book, the company is evil and the manager of the station is insane. Plus the aliens might wake up at any minuye and the only thing we know about them is that they are prone to violence and have bigger guns than we do. It's funny, violent and very thoughtful in parts. Pretty much what I expect from him. Plus, as usual, he provides a diverse cast of characters and even throws in a black male lead. That's actually the other thing I really like about him. He creates incredibly diverse worlds and makes them seem perfectly natural, as opposed to a lot of writers who toss in one non-white character and them write them as a token.

Cannon Busters

This I picked up almost on a whim this weekend. The creator of the series, Lesean Thomas, is apparently one of the new generation of black comicbook artists and writers. His art seems to be very anime/manga inspired, which is not that unusual these days. i have a teenage cousin who also wants to become a comic book artist and also draws heavily from the same sources.

The book itself is set in a magic - meets - technology style world and apparently draws heavily on The Wizard of Oz for its story about a young robot and her friends who are on a quest. So far, we've just been introduced to the world and our main character when all hell breaks loose. The art in this issue is very well put together. I hope the story lives up to it. For now, it gets three issues to prove itself to me.

Papa Midnight

Like Angeltown, this book is also being written by a novelist who has decided to try his hands at comic books. In this case, Mat Johnson gets to write the origin of Papa Midnite, a character from the Hellblazer comic book series and the movie Constantine.

Papa Midnite is a nightclub owner in New York who serves both humans and supernatural beings. In the movie he maintains a strict neutrality while in the comics he is somewhat of a crime lord and definitely has an agenda of his own. Mat Johnson creates a story rooted in Akan mythology and the history of slaves in New York to put together a very interesting tale of Midnite's origin and his true purpose. I'm biased towards this book since my father's side of the family are Akan(Ashanti and Akyem for those who are interested) and there is obviously a lot of attention put into getting certain aspects of the culture and mythology right. That aside, its a really enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone.

Anyway, thats enough nerdy behavior for one day. I'm going to bed now. Wish me luck tomorrow.

Invest in loss

2005-04-27T01:46:00.000-04:00

The last couple of weeks have led to another one of those weird breakthroughs I have been having in the process of becoming a better person. This is actually one I was given the clues to years ago, except I wasn't really listening.

When I first moved out to New Jersey after college, I was spending a huge amount of time at a kung fu school in the city. One of the things my teacher used to do was occasionally let students come along with him to a Sunday training session where he and a bunch of other middle aged Chinese masters of different styles would get together and train/push hands/talk martial arts. The friendliest and most intriguing of the group was a tai chi practitioner (his own words. Personally I'd have no problem using the word 'master' to describe someone at his skill level). I've been priviledged to practice with some immensely talented people but pushing hands with him was a very different experience. With just about every other really good person I've met, there was a sense that they definitely had a center, I just couldn't reach it because every attempt I made would be turned away or deflected . With him, there was nothing there. Any attempt at offense fell into a void and then all of a sudden I'd be in a wrist lock or off balance or my hands would be tied up. All the while he'd be laughing , making jokes and helpfully pointing out weaknesses in my structure. I ran into him again at the world Tai Chi day celebration in Central Park and, as usual, we pushed hands and I ended up on my ass. After we were done, he casually mentioned that one of the reasons he liked my teacher was the fact that he was always willing to compare skills with anyone. Not because he thought he was the best, but because he was felt that he could learn from the experience whether he won or lost. It took me this long to figure out that he was talking about me too.

Like most perfectionists, I am deathly afraid of putting in my best and the result not being, well, perfect. Therefore, to avoid the possibility that my best isn't perfect, I allow myself to do halfhearted, slipshod work which is obviously not perfect so I can comfort myself by pointing out that it obviously wasn't my best effort so its ok if it wasn't perfect. Therefore I won't study as hard as I could for an exam and then when I'm average I'll feel great about the fact that, had I studied the way I could have, the people at the head of the class would have some real competition. In social situations where I'm afraid of saying/doing the wrong thing and people not liking me, I'll settle for saying/doing nothing. I don't exersise or train as hard as I could because If I did I'd expect nothing less than perfect skill and I'd be unable to live with anything else. Basically, on my bad days I am incapable of trying something I could possibly be bad/fail at and so I settle for being mediocre. On my good days, of course, the cocky Akan part of my breeding kicks in and I'm unafraid of anything. Unfortunately, the bad days have been making a resurgence of late. Something about my trying to be better is stirring up all sorts of emotional muck in my system. I guess that means more meditation and the 'fear removal' technique Steven Barnes talks about on his blog. Wish me luck.

Its Spring. And other misc. thoughts

2005-04-09T23:58:00.000-04:00

Birds are chirping, the sun stays out for more than 10 minutes a day, trees are starting to flower and clothes are beginning to come off. Honestly, it is at times like this that I love where I live. Basically its a middle class predominantly brown (black people, latinos and an increasing Asian population) neighborhood in what is considered one of the nice parts of Newark. Basically the kind of place where your neighbors blast loud salsa music on a warm spring day. In this warm weather I get to see a parade of beautiful brown women every day. Honestly, it just makes me feel better.

The warm weather also means I can begin to train outside. I went for a short run through the park today to find a suitable space where I could work on my kung fu basics without too much publicity. For some strange reason, martial arts training tends to attract all sorts of unwanted attention. First of all, I was pleasantly surprised by how much stamina I still have. Plus I found a clearing about a mile away from the house that is perfect. I'll be out there tomorrow morning.

Anyway, since its spring, its about time for me to get rid of the afro. The last time I had a haircut was sometime in November so I have a fair amount of hair on my head. The reactions I've gotten from people have been really interesting. However, spring has come and I feel like it would be nice to be almost bald again. Plus I get to see how people's reactions toward me change now.

Another thing. Since its spring and I haven't bought new clothes in almost two years, I'll need to go shopping. That presents a rather interesting problem, though. You see, genetics and years of really low stance training have left me with a disproportionately large posterior and legs that look that they belong on a soccer player. Seriously, its one of those things just about every girl I've ever dated has mentioned. It presents interesting problems when I go shopping for khakis because if they are the right size for my waist they are almost skintight. I end up having to buy stuff significantly large than me so that I'll actually have some room in there. This is less of an issue when it comes to jeans and shorts but I'm trying something different this summer. We'll see how it goes.

I'm validated

2005-04-06T21:11:00.000-04:00

Further proof of what I spoke of in my previous post comes courtesy of New York Times writer Thomas Friedman's book 'The World Is Flat'. He explains the premise of his book in this article. Basically, the rest of the world is catching up scientifically while school systems in this country are wasting time debating the validity of evolution and scientifically accepted theories on climate change are ignored.

He appeared on the daily show to discuss his book yesterday and mentioned the area where I believe the lack of funding for basic research is going to hurt american industries a lot in hte next couple of decades, alternative energy.

Lets assume that corporate oil concerns keep masive government funding from going in this area until the technology has already been created by, say, the Chinese. While your evonomy will still be chained to a depleting natural resource, your biggest potential industrial rival will be totally independent as far as power generation and will be gaining influence throughout the developing world by passing on this technology.

As an African, I have a fairly serious interest in solar cell technology. Anyone who knows about Ghana's oil issues can understand why. I'm actually trying to get unto the research team of the professor who works in that field. The lack of funding in this area is something that really bothers me. Well, I was planning on learning mandarin anyway because of the fact that its useful in NY's kung fu community. I guess now it will also come in handy for reading Chinese research papers.

Are you guys trying to become irrelevant?

2005-04-02T16:05:00.000-05:00

I was reading Slashdot during one of my study breaks when I came across this article. Basically, DARPA, the research arm of the pentagon, is cutting its funding for open ended research in favor of more focused research with short term goals. For those of you unaware of DARPA, the most visible success was the invention of the internet. Their open ended research has yielded massive amounts of technological innovation which then crossed over into the civilian world and helped this country maintain its technological dominance.

This shift in funding isn't an isolated incident either. Corporate funding for research has also been shifting from the kind of open ended scientific research that could take a decade to pay off to short term projects that pay off in a few quarters. I imagine some people are wondering why this matters. Well, simply put, you're handing your technological dominance over to the Europeans and Asians on a silver platter by letting the bottom line dictate where research money goes. While short term research pays off faster, it does not create anything new. The kind of radical ideas, like the Internet, that end up shaping the future come from long term open ended research. You find a couple of really talented people, you give them money and leave them alone. Every once in a while you check on them every once in a while to make sure they're remembering to eat and shower. That's what DARPA used to do. So did formerly great American institutions like Bell Labs, HP and Xerox.

The Europeans still fund lots of basic research and Asian countries, particularly India, Japan, China and Korea are increasing the strength of their academic institutions. Incidentally, the increased barriers to immigration you've been throwing up are helping them by keeping the foreigners who populate your science and engineering programs at home. If they end up holding the patents to the next great thing while American research groups are still looking at the ground in front of their feet, there goes your dominance. Personally, It doesn't make a difference to me who is in charge. I just don't see why anyone would willingly take themselves out of the race. Plus I don't want to have to learn another language just so I can go somewhere else to do good research.

Interesting day

2005-03-31T02:41:00.000-05:00

Well, the saga of Kwasi and his neverending quest to find a good woman, or at least break in his mattress, continues.

Today's story is about one of the women in my earlier posting. The one who's about to become a doctor. For the purposes of this story I will refer to her as Doc. I'm sure the sheer originality of my name choice comes as a shock to you all.

Doc and I have had a wierd relationship since my freshman year of college. She was a Junior at the time. A lettered NCAA sprinter and one of the stars of the chemistry department. Beautiful, athletic, extremely talented. I, on the other hand, was a shy kid still growing out of all the insecurity I'd carried with me through high school. Since I was the only African in her dorm, she kind of checked up on me every once in a while During my first winter, when I was extremely homesick and depressed, she would cook for me and we'd hang out and watch old movies. I, of course, had a massive crush on her. At the same time I knew she was way out of my league so I never expected us to be anything but friends. Big mistake. She, for reasons I still can't fully grasp, liked me. Unfortunately, I was nowhere near secure enough in myself to understand why a woman who seemed perfect in my eyes would find me interesting. So instead of diving in head first, I punked out. Probably the biggest mistake of my college career, though it taught me a valuable lesson about going for what you want. Plus I learned how to salsa because of her. We ended up flirting back and forth but never really doing anything about it.

Anyway. Two years pass, she graduates and goes to med school. I don't see or hear from her for almost five years. Then another college friend of mine moved to Boston, ran into her and passed on her number. We started talking again. For about the last month or so we've spoken pretty much every week plus we've been flirting over email. She just got into her top choice residency program in New York so she'll be moving up this way. Plus she's still single, a fact that leads me to theorize a widespread outbreak of glaucoma in the Boston metro area. Either that or some form of brain eating bacteria. Not that I'm complaining, of course. Their loss may turn out to be my gain.

When we spoke last weekend she mentioned that her sister was in New Jersey so she might pass by. Plus she'd have to come look for apartments in the city anyway. I told her to give me a call if she made it into the area. Tuesday night, all of a sudden, I got a phone call from her saying that she was less than half an hour away visiting her sister and she'd leaving on thursday morning. This led to my scrapping my standard wednesday study schedule to spend the morning with her. We spent a couple of hours getting caught up withe each other's lives, discussing past relationships, what we want out of life, spiritual faith and our mutual love of walking around naked in our homes. It was a great conversation. Then we went out for lunch, I went home and immediately headed off to school. It was probaly the best day I've had in a long time. we're supposed to hang out again the next time she comes to look for an apartment. We'll probably go salsa dancing. Worst case, this will become a good friendship. Best case, I'll get another shot at something meaningful. I can't really lose either way.

Random thoughts:
1. She looks good. Apparently the result of three days a week in Tae Kwan Do class for the last couple of years. I now have the perfect motivation to train every day.

2. She's actually insecure about her looks. I fail to understand how that happens and yet I constantly see it. I know several incredibly attractive women who are have achieved great things and yet are still unsure of themselves. Its wierd for me because I use their drive an achievements as motivation and yet they don't seem to be aware of how special they are. Women like that should never need to be reassured that they're beautiful or desirable. There should me an army of men knocking down their doors every second of the day and yet they're alone and unsure of themselves. Some things I'll never understand.

Upgrades....

2005-03-28T02:16:00.000-05:00

Work wise, this was a slow weekend. I did a little bit of work, mostly for my graduate linear algebra class. In terms of material its probably my favourite class this semester.

A decent chunk of my weekend was spent getting upgrading my linux box and upgrading to KDE 3.4. The results can be seen above. Since I'm now running gentoo, waiting for everything to compile left me with ample time to study. Finally I have native composite support, even if it is a little buggy. by the way, the program playing my music is called Amarok. Its at least as good a media player as Itunes and has built in album cover downloads and Audioscrobbler support. I have a linux equivalent for just about every program I use in windows now. Honestly, the only reason I leave windows on is so I can play computer games.

Clouds on The Horizon

2005-03-24T03:04:00.000-05:00

Looks like my drought might be over sooner than I thought. Funny how the moment you stop worrying about things they tend to fix themselves. In other news, I will be sanitizing my room and the bathroom this weekend. Just in case.

Girls, Girls, Girls

2005-03-21T00:45:00.000-05:00

Here's the thing, I've been studying and training pretty much constantly for a couple of weeks now, with the exception of my time in Baltimore. The only thing I worked on there was my alcohol tolerance which, I am glad to report, is still holding up pretty well. Unfortunately, massive mental exertion and massive physical exertion have the same effect on me. I start thinking about women. Well, specifically, certain activities which, for me, usually require the presence of an enthusiastic woman. So, anyway, this blog has been getting just a little too introspective. Plus I've been studying all day and feel like talking about sex.

You may have noticed from one of my earlier posts that it has been a while since I last 'had relations' with a woman. The reason for that is simply that I've been focusing on getting other areas of my life back on track and so I've either been working, training or keeping in touch with friends and family. End result, I'm more stable, healthier and doing better in school. I've repaired almost all of the relationships I screwed up as well. Now all I need is an attractive, intelligent woman who wants to strip me naked and molest me. I promise not to put up any resistance, unless she wants me to of course.

Thankfully for me, things are starting to look up though. One of my old flames from college just graduated medical school and is moving to NYC to start her residency. Another old flame from high school is about to graduate from Harvard and is taking a job in Princeton. Add in the Neuroscience grad student from D.C. who I mentioned earlier and life could be getting really interesting very soon. Did I mention I like really intelligent women? Keeps me on my toes. Luckily for me, I somehow manage to remain on good terms with almost all of the women in my life so women I flirted with years ago still flirt with me today and women who I slept with years ago still occasionally come around for old times sake. Its sort of like being Chris Rock's proverbial dick in a glass jar, except the jar is fragile and cracked and could give away under its own weight at any second.

Personally, I look forward to this drought being over. Not that you guys will ever get any real details, I'm a gentleman about some things. Only my closest friends are entitled to all the sordid details

Old Friends

2005-03-18T03:15:00.000-05:00

The other thing I did this week was finally get back in touch with an old friend from college who I haven't spoken to in a couple of months. She was a casualty of the instability I went through after my mother came down with cancer and my grandmother died. I feel really bad about the fact that I cut her off because at the time she was going through some serious marital issues and I should have been there for her.

Swan and I became friends sometime in my sophomore year of college, her junior year. We just got along. We had similar tastes in music and movies and similar views of the world. Where we disagreed, we were both willing to argue things out in a civilized manner and respect each other's positions. She changed my mind about some things and I changed her mind about some things. We definitely learned a lot from each other. There was never really a romantic connection there, though at a certain point half the campus was convinced we were sleeping together. I think at the time neither of us was looking for anything and by the time we were both looking again the friendship had progressed beyond that point. I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if we'd met under different circumstances.

We've been there for each other through several relationships and all sorts of family issues. Right after college, she fell in love, got married and had a beautiful daughter who is, by all accounts, as smart and stubborn as her mother. The marriage kind of fell apart after she gave birth and one of her closest friends died. I tried to be there for her for a while, but then family issues got in the way and I dropped a lot of stuff I should have cared more about, including her. I feel like shit for doing that. She's pretty much family to me at this point and I'm supposed to be the kind of person who will give anything for those I consider family. She deserved a lot better from me. Thankfully her marriage seems to have weathered the storm, and so has our friendship. I just hope I never screw up like that again. Life is too short.

Spring Break recap

2005-03-18T02:03:00.000-05:00

The popular image of spring break seems to be one where college students run off to some warm part of the world to engage in unspeakable debauchery for a week. I never really had one of those kinds of spring break experiences. At least not the 'flying off to warm places' part.

I did have a really great week though. Friday night I went out with my brother and a friend of ours to another friends birthday party, which was being held at a club in New York. It was fun. I got pleasantly buzzed and danced with a couple of women. Pretty much my definition of a good night out. I don't really go to clubs to pick up women. It sometimes happens that I meet an interesting woman by chance. For the most part, however, I find that the club atmosphere is not the best place to get to know someone. Personally, I prefer bookstores and record stores.

Anyway, back to my week. On Saturday, I threw a bunch of clothes in the back of my car and drove almost 200 miles to Baltimore where one of my closest friends works as a researcher at Johns Hopkins. I love hanging out with Joel. He's one of those people who is totally honest and comfortable with all sides of his personality. I'm still working on being that comfortable with myself but around him I can let it all hang out. There are maybe two other people in the world that this holds true for. I got to his place on Saturday night and we made plans to go clubbing again, this time with a cousin of mine who lives in D.C. and a few of her friends. One of her friends got us in since her date worked at the club. Joel and I then spent the rest of the night alternating between dancing with strange women and protecting the women we came with from persistent, drunk men. (sidenote: this is another of the reasons I don't try to talk to women at clubs. There is an absolute lack of common coutesy on the part of most men that makes a lot of the women hyper defensive)

Interestingly enough, I did meet a woman this time. One of my cousin's friends was there with her roomate, who happens to be a neuroscience grad student. Now, it just so happens that intelligent, attractive black women who like to dance are a great weakness of mine. Plus, there actually seemed to be some chemistry there. I did, however, fail to get her number. Not that she wouldn't have given it to me if I'd asked, I just never got around to it. That was stupid, I know. I'm hoping my cousin will go against character and get it for me. I plan to keep pestering her until she does. I fail to understand something though. My cousin knows plenty of really attractive, really intelligent women and she know's I'm single. Yet, I only meet them by accident. Strange, isn't it?

Sunday was a little slow. We cleaned up his apartment because his fiance was going to be visiting for a month and the apartment looked like a small hurricane had blown through it. By the way, I really like his fiance. Most of the time, I have a really low opinion of the women my friends choose to be with. This one is a genuinely nice human being who loves him. Plus she's absolutely beautiful and has a great sense of humor. I'm really happy for him. After we straightened out the place we just lazed around and caught up on each other's lives. Then we picked up two med student friends of his (he's also going to med school in the fall) and went bar hopping. That was a lot of fun. All of his friends tend to be really honest, open people. Add in alcohol and we had a blast. Plus a 45 year old woman tried to pick us up at the third bar we went to. She basically cycled through all of us before giving up and going home.

On Monday, I went to lab with him and met the Ghanaian doctor who runs his lab as well as his lab partners, including this absolutely stunning Laotian girl who apparently can't get a date. Wierd. Anyway, they worked, I studied quantum physics (yes people, I took my books with me on my weekend off. I am a geek after all) and then we went out for happy hour with the med students and sat around for a couple of hours drinking beer and talking about science, love, sex and everything else. It was a really good night.

I left on Tuesday just before his fiance showed up. I figured they'd want the apartment to themselves plus I had work to do. Also, considering that I'm in a four month old drought, the idea of listening to other people have sex wasn't that appealing to me. Hopefully, things will work out with the neuroscience girl. The rest of the week has been dedicated, for the most part, to homework and studywith short breaks to do stuff like watch The Incredibles on DVD. That movie is easily one of the best super hero movies I have ever seen.

So that was my week, how was yours?

Interview Answers

2005-03-08T01:24:00.000-05:00

Since part of the point of this blog is for me to get used to expressing myself publicly instead of holding stuff in all the time, I figured it might be a good idea to try the "interview game". Plus, it seems like a good way to find out more about all the people whose lives I am reading about. My questions come courtesy of Mushtaq Ali and his always interesting blog The Traceless Warrior. Honestly, it took some thought to come up with good answers. If anyone would like to be interviewed, let me know.

1. What makes you proudest about your country?

Probably how well we manage to get along. Most people seem to have this perception of Africa as a homogeneous place. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are home to at least half a dozen major ethnic groups, each with a distinct language and culture. by the time you factor in the sub-groups there are somewhere on the order of 40-50 distinct nations, each of which used to have its own government and political structure and all of which probably predate the USA by at least a few centuries Consider the fact that some of these groups were more favoured by the British than others when we were a colony.

Now add in the fact that our population includes practitioners of several sects of Islam, christianity and traditional religions. To make things more interesting, consider political affiliations, which may or may not follow ethnic lines and factor in a history that includes three military coups. Now, we also have quite a few refugees from Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast as well as returning Black Americans, the Chinese, Koreans and Lebanese.

With all that going against us, not only have we managed to not kill each other, we've managed to actually get along and put together a stable country that is rapidly improving. I'm very proud of my people for the society we are trying to create. Its definitely not perfect, we have a long way to go. It is, however, built on an extremely impressive foundation.

2. What are people going to be saying about you twenty years from now?

Hopefully that I was willing to sacrifice everything for those I called family. Of all the things about myself I'm determined to get right, my dedication to my family, both real and adopted, is probably at the top pf that list. I owe a lot of who I've become to sacrifices made by my parents, my brother and sister and my extended family. If I want to be anything, its to be the kind of person who is also capable of making those sacrifices. I guess I'm very traditional in that sense.

Also, I'd like to be known as a person who was open to new ideas. My circle of friends has always been extremely diverse in terms of race, ideology and background. I prefer it that way. It enables me to learn more about the world always have my ideas of the world challenged. Ideally, I won't stop learning new things until the day I die.

3. You are down to your last ten dollars, but you have enough food to last until pay day, what do you spend it on?

Well, spring break is coming up which means I have a week of minimal work ahead of me. Since I already have a library card and a list of books to pick up, thats covered. I'd probably spend the money on a six-pack of spaten optimator. Not the most impressive choice, I know. However, one of those, a good book and probably some Coltrane in the background is an instant cure for study stress.

4. What is the strangest thing you have seen in America?

Now THAT is a hard one, especially considering the fact that I came straight from Ghana, which is a fairly conservative country, to Oberlin, one of the most liberal college campuses in the country. I would probably have to go with Safer Sex Night.

Its a historic party that Oberlin throws every year with sex as the theme. People cross dress or show up as close to naked as possible, usually while under the influence of one or more illegal substances. Contraceptives and sex toys are given away or raffled off and there is a huge amount of blatant sexual activity that takes place. I saw men making out with men, women making out with women, both sexes giving and receiving head, etc.

According to a friend of mine, the school's sexual information hotline gets more calls that night than they do any other night of the year. Now keep in mind that I was new to this country and came from a pretty conservative background. The things I saw there were, at the time, absolutely the strangest and most shocking things I had ever seen in my life. By my senior year, though, it was just another school tradition.

5. Who was your hero growing up?

Probably my father. In that sense I guess I'm like most boys. I never really spent that much time with him, none of us did. Compared to my brother and sister though, I probably spent the most time with him. In my eyes, he was wise, funny,well travelled(scholarship to grad school in Belgium, saw most of Europe and spent time in Israel) and incredibly well read. He always seemed to know something about everything. In retrospect I guess its not hard to see why I became so much like him.

Well, those are my answers

THE INTERVIEW GAME RULES:
Here's how you can play the interview game:
1. Leave me a comment saying "interview me." The first five commenters will be the participants.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some.)

Happy Birthday Ghana

2005-03-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

48 years ago today, the British flag went down and was permanently replaced by the red, yellow and green flag as ghana became the first country in 'sub-saharan' Africa to gain its independence. The picture above is from a historic telecast when Kwame Nkrumah, the first prime minister of Ghana, announced to the country that we were free.

That's another picture of Nkrumah. He was a very interesting person. A british trained teacher who became the head of the independence effort in Ghana. He di some great things in his time. Turning the country into a single party state was not one of them. His larger crime, however, was keeping Ghana unaligned in the cold war and accepting help from the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese. His politics were not very popular with the west so, while he was on his way to Vietnam to hopefully mediate, a CIA sponsored coup was organized to remove him from power. He went into exile and the country went through three more tries at becoming a democratic republic.
This time it seems to be working though, if last year's election was any indication. I have faith in my country and the continent in general. We're a relatively new country made up from dozens of differing ethnic groups with diffent languages, social and political traditions. Not to mention old rivalries that were inflamed during the years of colonization. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that we made it this far means that there is hope. We have a stable economy, our educational system is getting better and there is increasing opportunity for people who are willing to work hard, which is pretty much the entire country. I have hope for the future. I guess we'll find out whether or not I'm right sooner or later.

Back by popular demand, Profiles of Black Physicists

2005-03-06T23:42:00.000-05:00

I figured this time I'd post about someone who is actually alive. I think there's a tendency to focus on the dead and ignore the living. The man pictured above is Dr Sylvester James Gates, Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. He has a BS in physics and mathematics from MIT as well as a phd in physics, also from MIT. I first found out who he was while watching a three part NOVA special on string theory (yes, ladies and gentlemen, in case the title of the blog didn't give it away, I am a geek)
Apparently, he's one of the foremost experts in the field of string theory. He's also considered one of the best there is at explaining the concepts behind string theory to the general public.
Now, for those of you who are less technically inclined, string theory is an attempt to explain all structure and interaction in the universe in terms of vibrating 'strings'. Its an extremely mathematically intensive field and as close as you can get to cutting edge science in theoretical physics these days. The people involved in it spend most of their time dealing with concepts that can be fully understood by maybe 20 people on the planet.
He's actually pretty high up on the list of people I want to meet. The next time I'm in Maryland, I'll probably swing by the college and sit in on one of his classes.

Nightime fears/ My Parents

2005-03-04T02:14:00.000-05:00

I mentioned before that some nights I can't sleep because I have stuff on my mind that keeps me up. According to my mother, my father is the exact same way.

Its interesting how much my father and I have in common. More so because I spent way more time with my mother than I ever did with him. My mother gave up her career working for one of the best restaurants in the country when she had my brother. I guess she felt that raising her children was more important. Anyway, she opened up a small bakery in our house where she sold bread, pastries and cakes and catered small parties. One side effect of this was that I had a steady supply of freshed baked bread and pastries as a kid and a great cake every birthday. The other side effect was all three of us kids being able to read on our own by the time we were four years old. My mother would literally pull us away from whatever we were doing and read along with us. She also made sure we did all our schoolwork and got good grades. We had no choice, she was on a first name basis with every teacher I had until I graduated secondary school (high school for you guys) and the consequences of acting up were unpleasant to say the least.
Once I entered JSS (the equivalent of junior high) she reentered the workforce as a junior manager in charge of the canteens for a local factory. By the time I graduated high school she'd worked her way up to a senior manager in charge of all the canteens the company ran in the country. She also opened up a bar/cafe/larger bakery which was remarkably succesful. When the company privatized their canteens, she retired and took them over as a private consultant. In addition to all of this, she supplies bread to my old high school canteen and supplies raw materials to the factory she started out feeding. Pretty impressive huh? At this point, she probably makes more money than my father does. Add on to this the fact that she's probably one of the most compassionate people I know. She's my primary role model when it comes to determination/drive.

Now, lets talk about my father. He's an interesting character. On one level, I feel like know very little about him. However, at the same time, I'm the closest to him in temprament and behavior so I guess I know him better than I think.For most of my childhood I barely saw him. He was working. He's a civil engineer and a partner in one of the oldest consultancy firms in Ghana. He and a couple of his friends spent most of my childhood trying to get it up and running. HE also spent a couple of years in Nigeria as part of an exodus of Ghanaian professionals that occured in the early 80's. Now the company is fairly succesful but that is because of the work he put in when I was growing up. He was gone in the mornings before I woke up and back at about the time I went to bed. On weekends he usually was at work. Once in a while he came to church with us, probably to make my mother happy. I remember that I used to be excited on tuesdays because he would come home early to change before heading out to his rotary club meetings. For three years when I was in JSS, he would drive me to school every morning. Because of him, whenever I get into a car, I automatically reach for a seatbelt. I inherited his quietness, wierd sense of humor, love of movies, music, science fiction and good beer, his quiet activism and his open mindedness to the world.

So what has all of this gor to do with my nightime fears? Simple. My greatest fear is *drumroll*
Failing them:
They are both very extraordianry people who think highly of me. I don't ever want to let them down and yet sometimes I feel like I don't meet their standards.
Now you're probably asking why someone in grad school can feel like a failure. Its simple. I should have done better. I had a 1450 on my SAT's and was accepted into two of the five leading Engineering colleges in this country as an undergraduate. I ended up in a first tier liberal arts college whose physics department routinely sends people to some of the best graduate programs in the country. I, on the other hand, am in a second tier public research university. Worse, I'm not here because its the best I can do, I'm here because I failed to work at my full potential I'm smarter than this. I know it and my parents know it, though they'll never say it to my face. Right now, I'm starting to fix the parts of me that keep me working below my capabilities but I'm scared I'll fail and continue to slip. Close to mid terms, stuff like this keeps me up at night.

Oscar observations

2005-03-01T02:55:00.000-05:00

First off. Bravo to Morgan Freeman. The academy has owed that man an oscar for a looong time now. I'm glad to finally see him get it. I haven't seen 'Million Dollar Baby' yet, It just opened at the local cinema about a week ago. I'll try to catch a matinee this weekend.
Don Cheadle, on the other hand, is still waiting for his. My brother suspects that he'll become the next Morgan Freeman. A man with an absolutely impressive body of work but little recognition.
Jamie Foxx, The next $20 million black actor. A much as I would have preferred for Don to take the oscar, Jamie was remarkable in Ray. He deserved it.
Clint Eastwood is someone who I've followed since the beginning of his career. I still remember the first time I saw 'A Fistful of Dollars'. I actually have the Man With No Name trilogy on DVD. It was one of my first purchases when I got a DVD drive for my computer. He's one of those people whose growth and evolution makes you realize that aging is something to be embraced, not feared.
Finally, Martin Scorsese. The number of times the academy has managed to avoid giving him an oscar he might as well be black. At this point, they just need to hand him a statue on his next project regardless of how good it is. He could direct the ugly stepchild of 'Battlefield Earth' and 'Gigli' and they would still owe him an oscar.

Apparently some black people were upset about Chris Rock's Magic Johnson Theater skit because they felt it painted the average black moviegoer in a bad light. All I have to say is this. Considering the fact that someone in hollywood greenlighted 'Soul Plane' how much worse can it possibly get?

Sidenote: I need to look for a good indie theater. I lived within walking distance of one and a short drive of another when I was in Cleveland. $10 on a monday night would buy me a ticket, popcorn and a heineken. Good times.

Wierd TV observations: 24

2005-03-01T02:26:00.000-05:00

Since I didn't have class, I was at home in time to catch fox's 24 today. While watching it something interesting occured to me. 24's treatment of its female characters is more than a little disturbing.

Lets look at a few examples.
The current head of CTU is painted as this cold, conniving bitch who also happens to have a mentally disturbed daughter who just commited suicide.
Aisha Tyler's character was a mole for the terrorists until they killed her.
Bauer's daughter was constantly running from one improbably idiotic situation to another. His mistress was also a mole who tried to kill him. His current girlfriend, much like his daughter, is constantly running headlong into dangerous situations.
Pres. Palmer's daughter was raped, his wife was working for his enemies.
Behrooz's girlfriend was invited over and killed basically because she was stalking him.
Bauer's contact at CTU is framed and tortured before getting out and blackmailing her boss for a better position.

Now, I don't watch this show regularly, I usually catch less than half of a given season so I could be wrong here. On the other hand, it is more than a little improbable that I just happen to catch the eps where the women are treated badly. Its also possible that this is just part of a larger trend involving both male and female characters. Doesn't seem that way to me though.

Snow Day!

2005-03-01T02:13:00.000-05:00

For those of you not living on the east coast, we are currently being hit by another in a string of snowstorms that have been appearing lately. This one is supposed to keep going until some time Wednesday. One consequence of all this snow was the closing of school this afternoon, meaning that my 6:00 class didn't happen. I'll probably have to go in on friday to make up for it. School may also be closed down tomorrow if snow is still falling and the roads haven't been properly cleared.

That I don't understand. Winter happens every year here. Therefore every year there is snowfall. The means to clear snow aren't exactly rocket science (believe me, I know) so the fact that every year the state ends up struggling to figure out how to get rid of the snow makes no sense to me. Well, either way I have food and a crapload of work I need to do. I'll be fine

Edward Alexander Bouchet, 1st black physicist (1852 - 1918)

2005-02-16T02:33:00.000-05:00

I mentioned that I would be making a couple of posts dealing specifically with black history month. Yes, the month is already halfway over but I don't recall any rule saying I can't start late or make these posts in November for that matter. Anyway we will be starting with something near and dear to my heart, physics.

The man pictured above is Dr. Edward Alexander Bouchet. Ph.D Physics, 1877, Yale University and member of Phi Beta Kappa. He spent most of the rest of his life teaching chemistry and physics at an all black school in Philadelphia. All this at a time in when most black people were lucky to get any kind of rudimentary education at all.

People like him inspire me greatly. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be a black graduate student in the 1870's. He probably faced obstacles I can barely imagine on a fairly regular basis and yet he stayed true to his goal and excelled. That kind of strength of character gives me something to strive for and helps make me a better person.

Dr. Bouchet, wherever you are, I'm probably not worthy to walk in your footsteps. But I'm going to try anyway.

I'm smart!

2005-02-10T01:55:00.000-05:00

I just had an interview today for the job of assistant Linux network admin for a lab in the neuroscience department. Thankfully it went great. At least I assume so from the fact that the interview lasted almost an hour and a half. They asked me a lot of questions covering a wide range of possible issues and I think I came up with good answers. I knecw some things which they didn't, which felt great. I hope i get it. The money would be great, I'd love the experience and I might be able to talk them into giving me free staff parking.

I'm a little conflicted when it comes to their experimentation on animals though. Don't get me wrong, I realise the necessity of that kind of research. I also realise that this is not the only way people use animals for our purposes. At the same time there's a part of me that hates to watch another living thing suffer. Considering the fact that I like meat, this does make me seem hypocritical, I know. Something else to deal with.

You have got to be kidding me!!!

2005-02-05T02:17:00.000-05:00

Apparently, here is an 'urban' radio station somewhere in the bay area having a black history month contest. The listeners have to write an essay at least six lines long talking about local black leaders. Now so far this all sounds reasonable right? So what's the catch?

Well, in a stroke of marketing genius worthy of Amos & Andy, they decided to award the winner a free dell computer and a year's supply of Popeye's Chicken!!!

Yep, you read that right. A year's supply of fried chicken. From a 'black' radio station. I'm guessing that their plan to have the National Watermelon Promotion Board co-sponsor didn't pan out. Who do they have working there? Rejects from the Mcdonalds frycook training program? How monumentally idiotic do you have to be to even consider offering chicken as a prize for a black history month event? What kind of drugs are these people on? I have nothing else to say about this. I feel like I already lost brain cells just looking at that site.

Black History Month

2005-02-05T01:54:00.000-05:00

The longer I stay in this country, the more aware I become of how absolutely necessary the idea of Black History Month is. With this increased awareness, however, comes the increased frustration of seeing it turned into a marketing tool and watching the history of black people in this country and wordwide reduced to MLK's "I have a dream" speech and George Washington Carver's work on peanuts.

I have a little cousin in middle school who is growing up with this as his perspective on black achievement. At least in Ghana he'd have gotten a decent education on the history and beliefs of the major ethnic groups plus colonial/postcolonial Ghanaian history. Plus he would have gotten to see the forts and castles where slaves were kept before being shipped off. Now, granted, The history curiculum back home needs to be widened in scope. A lot of my knowledge comes from personal research and college classes but compared to what he gets taught ,he has less to start with than I did. Thankfully he has his mother and his cousins to fill in the gaps.

For my own peace of mind, though, I will be making a couple of posts, mostly about black people in the sciences. Enjoy

There goes my free time

2005-01-22T03:38:00.000-05:00

Random surfing brought me to this site . A free game allowing me to freely create martial arts styles!! I'm torn between the urge to worship the man who came up with this concept and the desire to kill him now before he ever releases it and completely obliterates all of my free time

Something to aspire to

2005-01-21T02:38:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about this post from Steven Barnes' blog. Particularly, this section

"this would easily relate to my sense that the negative programs run by America, and black America, pertaining to young black men are absolutely poisonous. That black immigrants who come from a culture in which there are role models and mythologies that support excellence, as opposed to young black men, who, faced with countless dehumanizing and emasculating images in the majority culture turn to the only powerful images they can find. In America, this happens to be Hip-Hop culture right now"

It reminded me of a previous post where I touched on the importance of role models to children. This seems like as good a time as any to talk some more about that.
Heroes give us something to aim for. An idea of what our limitations are, or should be. Children who grow up believing that there are no limitations in what they can accomplish therefore start out with a significant advantage over children who expact to achieve little. For now, even if you don't believe this accept it as my hypothesis.
Now, the image of black people in the American media is, with very few exceptions, limited to athletic, entertainment, criminal and/or sexual prowess. (sidenote: As for Africans, we're usually starving, exterminating each other or living in the jungle. However, we retain the same 'animal' sexuality) Don't believe me? Talk to someone from a foreign country whose only exposure to America has been through the media and ask them what they think about black people, or just observe them around black people.
Since these images are all children see, they expect little more of themselves. A good way to counteract this mental poisoning and expand their horizons is to show them as many images as possible of extraordinary people who look like them as possible. This was originally the idea that led Carter G. Woodson to create negro history week, the precursor to black history month. It's also a large part of the reason why African and Carribean immigrants tend to do comparatively well despite all the racism and idiocy we have to contend with. We have a larger pool of role models to draw on when creating our expectations.

All's Well

2005-01-21T02:28:00.000-05:00

The car is back and unharmed, although she needs a wash and I'm out $150 in storage fees (for two days!). School is going well so far. I'm more focused in class. We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck.

2005-01-20T21:15:00.000-05:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Jack Johnson: Flawed Hero

2005-01-19T03:12:00.000-05:00

The second half of Ken Burns' Documentary: Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson aired today. I already knew who he was but this show definitely added a lot to what I knew about both the man and the boxer. Like most great people, his story was at once humbling, inspiring and saddening (the rhyming in unintentional, I promise). This was a man who, in an age where black men could be assaulted or killed for even daring to speak out of turn, lived his life with a fearlessness that would be remarkable even today. The fact that he was somewhat troubled and made several unwise decisions does little to overshadow the magnitude of his achievements or the strength of his character. I, for one, salute him and hope I can one day learn to live my life with the same fearlessness.
R.I.P Jack Johnson, a giant among men

I Can't sleep

2005-01-19T02:36:00.000-05:00

It seems that I inherited my father's insomniac tendencies when stressed. Usually night time meditation clears up my head enough for me to go straight to sleep. Not this time. In my defence, today was particularly stressful. My car was stolen and then recovered by the police. The perks of living in Newark, I guess. Though I can't imagine what kind of idiot thought a '99 Hyundai Accent was worth stealing, especially considering the other cars on the street that day. I have no idea what kind of shape it is in and I won't know until tomorrow morning when I go to pick it up. In addition to that, my procrastination last semester will keep me from registering for classes until at least thursday. Unfortunately, classes started today. I'm going to just keep showing up until I get all the paperwork taken care of. On a brighter note, I didn't panic. I stayed calm and handled everything as it happened. I hope I can remain this sure of myself in the future

Current training regimen

2005-01-13T19:50:00.000-05:00

My current daily training regimen is my return to being a dedicated, slightly obsessive martial arts student. I figure that by putting it up here, I'll be a little bit more motivated to see it through.

For at least the first three months, I will be taking the advice I have received from all of my teachers and going back to basics. That means lots of stance work and single movement drills. Right now, its split up into two onw hour sessions. One in the morning and one at night

Morning: 7-8 am

I start by warming up. Usually with 40-50 jumping jacks. These are followed by a series of joint rotations. From there, immediate transition into stance work. There are a series of seven stances that are basics in the style of northern mantis I practise. I hold each one for ten breaths on each side. Every week an additional breath is added. Usually by the time I'm done with I'm warmed up enough for about 10-15 minutes of stretching. The primary focus of the stretches are my hips, back and legs. The rest of the time goes to mantis single movement drills.

Night: midnight-1am

This time is reserved for my dachengquan practise. Currently I am managing 35 minutes if standing meditation. Every week, I add on an additional 5 minutes. The rest of the time goes to movement drills

After 3 months, I'll look at how far I've come and see if any changes need to be made.

Wish me luck

I'm back

2005-01-13T03:50:00.000-05:00

I've been without internet access for almost a week now. Apparently because someone in the house has been uploading a huge amount of data. In response the cable company drastically throttled down our connection. Now seeing as I live with three graduate students and a law student, all of whom, like me, make good use of their computers means that this isn't that hard to understand how this could happen. On the upside, I made a good start on Feynman lectures and got in a decent amount of training. I guess I am a little addicted to having net access. I'll have to watch that from now on.

These are our heroes

2005-01-04T01:30:00.000-05:00

This Christmas I set out to buy my little 12 year old cousin a present. An image of a black superhero. Watching him grow up in America has made me more aware of how important it is to see people who look like you do extraordinary things. As anyone who is familiar with the world of comics knows, black heroes are few and far between. As a comic book fan myself, this is one of my biggest issues with the industry. Thankfully, I've put in a fair amount of time and energy over the years into finding science fiction and comics with black creators and well written black characters so, since he has the good taste to be a fan of 'Static Shock', I got him the trade paperback. He loved it and I felt great for getting him to read more while simultaneously finding him a black hero image.
Sidenote: According to Static's creator, Dwayne Mcduffie, the show folded because they were unable to get any merchandising deals for a critically acclaimed award winning children's cartoon with consistently high ratings. Would anyone care to venture a guess why?

New Year's Goals

2005-01-01T04:00:00.000-05:00

Well, another year has come around and it is time for me to take charge of my life and steer it down the right path. I figure by writing out my goals down and making them concrete I'll be more likely to follow through. Here goes

Academic:
Approach every class from a 'teach yourself' perspective. Look up alternate materials, review notes asap after class, make sure I maintain a solid understanding of the core concepts and any necessary mathematics.
Put in as much time as is necessary to make sure that I'm ready for qualifiers by the end of the semester.
Find an advisor. Ideally the professor doing solar cell research. I need the money and the experience.
Also, finish reading the Feynman lectures. Try to average a chapter a day.

Physical:
Continue my daily martial arts regimen. I've been doing this for about a week. Sooner or later it'll end up on here. Probably some time this week.
Try and work out a weekly training routine with Master Wang, my current teacher. Ideally get into shape so I can compete in either Baltimore or Akron at the end of the year in forms, push hands and sparring.

Personal:
Call my parents more. They worry about me and I miss them. I learned from my mother's cancer scare that it's impossible to predict how long they'll be around.
Pay more attention to people I care about. For some reason, I tend to take the people I care about for granted. Not out of malice, but becase I assume they'll always be there. They deserve a higher priority. Bu the end of this week, I'll be caught up on all the phone calls and emails I've been putting off.
Return to the version of me that couldn't care less about whether or not people like me. I'm happier and more genuine when I'm free to say what I'm thinking and not worry about other people's expectations. Plus I get more women.
Speaking of women. I need to start dating again. As soon as qualifiers are over I have some calls to make.

Finally:
Recognise the worth of every moment

This seems loke a long list but a lot of the things on there are actually connected. Basically, if I treat myself and my family with the respect they deserve, the rest will fall into place.

PS
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE

Goodbye Mama, I'm sorry

2004-12-16T02:14:00.000-05:00

My grandmother (Mama to her grandkids) died in her sleep about four months ago. She'd been getting progressively sicker for the better part of decade so I cant say it was totally unexpected. Somehow it still managed to blindside me. We weren't particularly close, I saw her on sundays after church (back when I went to church) and she lived with us for a brief while. I hadn't actually seen her since the last time I was in Ghana, almost three years ago. I always had mixed feelings about her. Truth be told, I hated her for a while. She hurt my mother more than once and treated all her daughters far worse than she treated her sons, even though her daughters took care of her. I'm not a vengeful person by nature. Generally I'm good at letting stuff go and not holding grudges. Except if you hurt my family. The things my grandmother did hurt my mother deeply and I never forgave her. After she died, I didn't mourn. A part of me felt happy in a perverse sort of way. Mostly though, I was conflicted.
A couple of weeks ago, I visited my aunt. While I was there, she handed me a huge stack of pictures she had taken when she was in Ghana for the funeral. Most of tham were pictures of family. My parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, family friends. Buried somewhere in the middle of the stack were two pictures of my grandmother in her casket.All of a sudden, old memories rose to the surface. I when I was a child, my mother would pass by her house every sunday after church. I'd run up to her and give her a kiss on the cheek. Then I would grab whatever sweets she had for me and run into her sitting room to watch cartoons and read my grandfather's old encyclopedias. When she got really sick for a while and came to live with us, she would be sitting on the porch every morning reading her bible. I would go by and kiss her in the cheek and watch her smile. Whatever she did in the past, she's still my grandmother and I'll never get to see her smile again. That hurts alot more than I expected. Wherever she is, I hope she can forgive me for carrying this grudge around for as long as I did. I'll miss her.

Random musings: smoking and the 'Truth.com' ads

2004-12-14T02:58:00.000-05:00

One of the things I am most proud of is the fact that I may have saved a man's life. This is actually a story my father tells a lot. When I was about eight years old and equipped with the fearlessness of childhood, I talked one of his partners into giving up smoking. We were visiting his home one day when I noticed him holding a pack of cigarretes and proceeded to point out how unhealthy the habit was for him and especially for his newborn child. With hindsight, I suspect now that part of my reason for calling him out was the fact that my grandfather, who I adored though I never really got to know him, lost a lung to a pipe smoking habit. Either way, I argued with him for a long while, reportedly showing an eloquence far beyond my years and thoroughly embarrasing my parents. A couple of weeks later, my father told me that he'd quit smoking beacuse of me.
Why did I tell you this? Partially because I always thought it was a good story and partially to note that as an eight year old in a developing country with limited access to information, I already knew smoking was bad for you. Anyone who picks up the habit now has no excuse for blaming cigarette companies. I'm sure they really are evil soulless bastards who would turn us all into addicts at the drop of a hat without losing a moment's sleep. Most large corporations are the same way. The fact still remains that we don't have to buy their products and in this day and age there is no excuse for not being aware of the dangers. People blaming cigarette companies for their lung cancer are like people blaming fast food restaurants for their weight problems. As mature adults we are responsible for what we put into our bodies regardless of how much advertising surrounds those products. If we choose to be ignorant, we can't blame people for exploiting that ignorance. Granted they aren't nice people(I believe the term 'soulless' might have come up in this post) but they are dependent on our ignorance for their survival. They lose their power the moment we choose to take responsibility for ourselves and stop listening to them.
Might I suggest, therefore, that instead if ads telling us about how evil tobacco companies are, we try a simpler approach. "Smoking may look cool, but it will probably steal away years of your life and a large chunk of your money. It will also hurt those around you. If you are prepard to live with that, good luck to you"
The End