Radical Transparency

Micaela the Intern just sent me this.

Definitely the first time Perez Hilton has ever showed up on this blog.

And that fact (and his post) raise a few questions:

A. Is Perez actually sad about NPR?* Seems like lots of his readers (an impressive percentage of whom, hilariously (and awesomely), represent themselves with pictures involving boobs or shirtless dudes) are not sad.

2. Is NPR really liberal? Is it really offensive to the Perez Hilton community? Or might some of those people just be spitting back anti-intellectual propaganda? Someone sometime somewhere some way convinced them that the elites were out to get them, and they get freaked out by anything that feels in any way academic or theoretical or learned (that how you spell lear ned?)?

d. Huge bummer that NPR is feeling the financial squeeze. I think they create real value. Great news. Great interviews. Great analysis. And, while pledge drives make me crazy, I love the theory behind their voluntary subscription model. They ask people to name their own price, to pay what they can. And that makes so much sense in so many ways. Clearly, it's vulnerable, however. I'll be curious to see if they step up the fundraising efforts in some way.

*Note: Sorry to show my liberal bias with a link to The Huffington Post.  I don't really even like The Huffington Post.  But they post the whole cutbacks memo from the NPR CEO, and I figured that's probably the most useful thing to read at this point.

I quote below from an American nerd athlete artist.  He's relieved at the American electorate's ability to choose the intellectual candidate.  But his comment intends to celebrate neither American nor Chinese culture.

We live in a country where the nerd gets beaten up in middle school.  In China, the nerd is the bully.

I did not know this about China when I lived there.  I never saw it happen, never heard stories about it until today.  But it does make sense.  Good grades earn big teacher love and, with it, positions of authority in classrooms.  And there doesn't exist a school-connected athletic infrastructure to balance the power.  Validation comes first for the successfully academic minds and significantly later, if at all, for anyone else.

Anyone have any experience with this?  I'd love to know more.

Sarah Palin doesn't like fruit flies.  Do we know why?

Does she think they are tiny and silly and dirty and thus obviously totally scientifically useless?

Or does she worry about the implications of research that deals with genes and genetics?  Might she think fruit fly research lies on a slippery slope toward acknowledging truth in evolution?

Thank you GOOD Blog for making me wonder about this.  But why, GOOD Blog, did you react to my submitted comment so coldly?  You didn't post it.  You didn't tell me it was awaiting moderation.  You didn't tell me something technical had gone wrong.  I'm confused.  So I resort to blogging.

The More Perfect Union speech in Philadelphia was a beautiful thing, but I think this is the Campaign 2008 moment that'll stick with me longest.

I'll remember it for two reasons.

A. I think it's important to keep in mind that inflated tires would have just as much oil import relief impact as expanded drilling.  Neither would do much, but nor would either be entirely trivial.  And the fact that something simple and inexpensive and habitual like tire inflation can be non-trivial is very cool.  But the big lesson, I think, is that the people our political system tends to choose to lead our government are not well equipped to deal with huge, long term problems like the fact that the world economy depends heavily on a scarce fuel that both earns big money for dangerous people and the use of which does terrifying damage to the natural systems on which we depend for food and breath and wonder.  They debate largely symbolic issues like tire gauges vs. Alaskan drilling, not big fundamental energy questions, and they do it because we make our decisions based on those symbolic issues, and that's a bummer. 

B. A lot of people in this country do take pride in being ignorant, and that's both dangerous and sad.  Seeing Obama call them out, however, is hopeful.  If our leaders are going to participate in solving those huge, long term problems, they'll have to be more than just populist mouthpieces.  They'll have to be better than the rest of us: calm in crisis, selfless, and open to radical new ideas.  Condemning the anti-intellectual (anti-knowledge, anti-learning, anti-curiosity) attitude is a good step.