Rare uncontacted Amazon tribe photographed

Seems especially awesome after watching the Lost season finale.

A bonus post, before I sign off!

I just saw this story, which is sort of old news, but who cares?:

Rachael Ray ad pulled as pundit sees terror link

Basically, the stylist at a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial shoot put a keffiyeh on Rachael Ray. Michelle Malkin, who is convinced that the keffiyeh is “hate couture,” drummed up a mini-controversy on the right-wing web and got Dunkin’ Donuts to capitulate.

A couple things about this drive me crazy: First, the vast majority of people most likely have no clue about where the keffiyeh comes from, other than “Urban Outfitters,” or maybe “Balenciaga.” Among those people is probably the stylist for the commercial who just knows that the pattern is trendy, which it of course is. Second, for people who do know where it comes from geographically, they most likely don’t associate it with any political statement at all. The only people who see a keffiyeh and think “terrorist supporter” are right-wing bloggers and people who read them (who, of course, are all right wing bloggers themselves).

The biggest problem here, however, is Michelle Malkin’s insistence that the keffiyeh is “hate couture”–where that racist misconception comes from, and what it signifies about the way some people interact with other cultures.

Historically, the keffiyeh is a scarf worn by Arab men. That’s it. It wasn’t invented by Osama bin Laden or designed to kill Americans. This alone does not excuse the keffiyeh. The swastika predated the Nazis by centuries, but any use of it now is irrevocably a reference to Hitler and the Third Reich.

More recently, Palestinians wore the keffiyeh as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. Initially, some people wore the scarves in solidarity with Palestine. Now, these people are certainly not advocating terrorism just by wearing a scarf, just as support for a Palestinian state does not automatically mean support for terrorism. (Directed at these people, Malkin’s screed, while still inane, is the most coherent: she just thinks that any support of Palestine is a tacit support of suicide bombers.)

Even more recently, the fashion industry has picked up on the keffiyeh and its aesthetically appealing pattern. One of the appeals of the scarf is undoubtedly its pre-existence in another culture; reappropriation in design is an often wonderful shortcut to introducing new items to the market. Instead of designing something from the ground up, you can find an article of clothing or a piece of furniture that already existed elsewhere and transplant it. You gain the novelty of design and the pleasure of cross-cultural reference in one package!

So why did the fashion industry pick up the keffiyeh? Nice pattern? (Black and white was so in right then) Subversiveness? (Supporting Palestine, tres outré) Transplanting cultural artifacts for fashion gain? Probably a little bit of all three. These three reasons probably also sum up the reasons why consumers picked up the scarves for themselves. You might note that none of these reasons include “blowing people up.”

Malkin’s “hate couture” label relies on the keffiyeh being a symbol that supports terrorism, which is in no case entirely true. Even if you go to Palestine, only a miniscule portion of the people in keffiyeh would actually be terrorists, and even a terrorist-supporter might wear the keffiyeh, not because he supports terror, but because IT IS A SCARF.

The biggest problem with Malkin’s BS is that she has a fundamental misunderstanding about how symbolism works in culture. A symbol, just like a word, only means anything through the the mutual understanding of people. If I draw some crazy squiggle and say that it means “Michelle Malkin is an idiot,” it only means that if other people start using the squiggle themselves. Even more, if I took my symbol to another country, it would no longer mean anything, because no one there has heard of it before. (“Perro” doesn’t mean dog in China.) The swastika symbolizes Nazism because it had worldwide, terrifying dissemination. The keffiyeh may have sporadic local significance as a symbol of Arab nationalism (though not specifically terror-support), but it has most assuredly unlinked from that meaning in the vast majority of its uses (i.e. Rachael Ray is not besties with al Qaeda). Malkin’s failure to notice that symbols do not have inherent significance, and her insistence on linking any support for the Arab community with hate speech make her claims as meaningless as a keffiyeh on an Olsen twin. (hehehe)

and with this, I start the “Politics” category of the blog, which will hopefully stay underpopulated because I hate this stuff

I’m going to be on vacation for the next two weeks in an undisclosed European location, and rather than promise some updates from foreign soil that definitely will not happen, I’ll just reassure you that some blog-worthy things have happened, and some more may happen over the next two weeks!

In the meantime, watch this video through 1:30 to see former senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel Crank Dat. (This is why the internet exists)

Au revoir!

I have been writing up some wild notes while reading Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine, but since I want to keep the tone here away from the aggressively academic, I’m going to set them aside and spare you a super-long, super-convoluted braindump. (but no promises I won’t get heady in spite of myself.)

Blackmore takes on two main tasks in her book: proving that memes “exist,” and convincing us that we should care. I think she does the former quite efficiently, but the latter is addressed in a sort of anemic way. Personally, just the fact that memes plausibly exist is enough reason for me to care. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Worst cover ever?

Memetic evolution is proven basically by analogy with genetic evolution. Richard Dawkins outlines three features of a system that cause evolution to occur: variation, selection and retention. The idea, in a nutshell, is that if you have different things, not all of these things survive, and the ones that do survive pass on their traits to a subsequent generation, then evolution must occur. Think of a box full of barnyard animals. If you start with chickens and cows, that is variation. If all the chickens die from some chicken disease, that is selection. The cows then only have baby cows that retain the cow-ness of their parents. Starting with chickens and cows, ending with just cows, that is evolution, survival of the fittest, yadda yadda yadda.

The idea goes that if you can prove that something has these three traits (variation, selection, retention), then it can evolve. There are some finer points in here about the mechanisms involved, but for the sake of not getting too complicated, I’ll leave those aside. Memes, then, are ideas. Of course, it is rather difficult to specify what an idea is, physically, or whatever, but if we hold tight to the three traits of evolutionary replicators, it doesn’t really matter. Memes have variation (I like apples; you like oranges), they have selection (I now like oranges because you convinced me), and they have retention (I now tell all my friends to eat oranges because the cool kids do it). The generations are less clearly defined than in the box of cows, but it is the horizontal transmission of memes (as opposed to the vertical transmission of genes in a family tree) that makes them so cool.

Once Blackmore establishes this, she tries to show how Memetics can compellingly explain a host of scientific mysteries more coherently than existing theories, so that you will ditch your passé sociobiology for memes. Said mysteries include the increase in human brain size from the apes (memes thrive on bigger brains, bigger-brained monkeys survive socially, make babies, etc.), UFO sightings (ET is a meme), and the development of language itself (once we started to imitate each other, we finally had retention, and the ensuing evolution inexorably pooped out language). A lot of these explanations come across as pretty weak, especially the brain size argument, which is based on the oft-disproven hypothesis that brain size has much to do with intelligence.

I find the linguistic explanation pretty compelling or at the very least, interesting. The founding premise is that any development that aids the replication of memes will be selected for; so grammar and language, which make memes easier to copy and transmit, were successful because those who initially used them were better able to communicate and, thus, survive. Once everyone has evolved language, memes essentially evolve on their own, without any necessary ties to biological fitness. Divorced from biological survival, memes evolve like crazy, spawning modern human culture. Awesome.

The idea that the survival of cultural features is dependent on how good they are to the memes is played out online: see Facebook, connecting meme machines for instant and widespread meme replication. Hypothetically, you could use a criterion like this to predict the success or failure of an internet startup: Is it good for the memes?

More immediately, however, in regards to this very blog: it should not survive unless it is good for meme propagation. So, starting with that previous post on Mavis Beacon, I’m starting a new post category specifically for links and content found elsewhere on the internet: Memes. From now on, there should be a mix of original and linked content, probably 50/50, but who knows.

If you’re displeased with this development, just remember: What’s good for the memes is good for you.

I think there must be some algorithm to describe the posting frequency of truant bloggers:

1. Start with frequent, energetic posts. (At least one per day)
2. Gaps being to appear between posting spurts. (Content and vigor begin to decline)
3. Gaps are longer than posting spurts. (Posts contain apologies for decreased frequency)
4. Posts are exclusively about the gaps. (Er…)

…

5. Regular vigorous posting resumes and readership increases tenfold! (Maybe! Would only take nine people!)

I repeat now my prior excuse for not posting: Slogging through how-to books does not translate well to exciting blog posts.

(Look at that, slogging. Maybe I should rename the blog: Slogging: Infrequent Posts About Boring Crap)

I have a more recent excuse though, and that is, through some database tomfooolery over at my host, my login stopped working here. Ever the intrepid blogger, I managed to sneak into my own MySQL database and reset my password, using what I can only describe as magic, because I have no clue what I was actually doing. Trusting that I didn’t accidentally engage the auto-destruct, we should be in the clear for a few months before I have to consult the Blogonomicon (or whatever) again.

And, to pretend that I’m not in phase four of the blog timeline above, a promise of new content! I have a few things backed up to write about, which I’m going to put here solely to shame myself into following up on:

• I will write something about memes!
• I will write about my trip to New York in perhaps a series of posts on current museum exhibits!
• I will write about getting a job (sort of).
• I may write about fashion!
• (items on this list subject to furtive future redaction)

So I’m still bad at posting regularly, but this is less of a gap than there was last time! I come out of hiding to post the most beautiful thing I’ve seen on the internet in a while:

from lonelysandwich’s flickr

Brief explanation for my truancy: A little bit of HTML burnout, mixed with a week of parental visits, tossed with some time-consuming work on long-term projects resulted in my both not having anything to post and not having any time to post. Parents have left, HTML is fun again, and the projects have some more momentum now, so I’m back!

I am in the middle of a few books at the moment: The Meme Machine, by Susan Blackmore, The Producer as Composer, by Virgil Moorefield, and Live 7 Power!, by Jon Margulies.

Live 7 Power!

Live 7 Power! is one of those “unofficial manual”/”hidden guide” books to my music-making program of choice. I’ve been using the program for a few years, but there are a crazy number of features that I never use and wouldn’t even know how to use, hence reading this book.

The Producer as Composer

I picked this up when I dropped by the MIT Press bookstore. It’s a mostly academic survey of how the roles of music producer and musician have grown closer to each other, and often combined entirely. Ever since I read Brian Eno’s “The Studio as a Compositional Tool,” I’ve been interested in this kind of stuff; especially how for the current generation of bedroom recording artists, being both producer and musician is a given. The book also has great little descriptions of seminal recordings from a production standpoint, so you can focus on the details in “Be My Baby” or “Good Vibrations” that you might normally miss. I have absolutely no sense of production values, eq, etc., so I’m hoping this will encourage me to figure out how to shape my sound better in the future (maybe with the new tricks I pick up from Live 7 Power!

The Meme Machine

Since I’m going into what is essentially technologically-aided cultural studies, I want to read up on theories I find interesting and see if there is anything there for me to use academically. The Meme Machine takes the idea of memes, which people on the internet tend to use colloquially and pushes it to its logical limits. The basic thesis is that in the mind, analogous to genes in cells, are memes. Memes are essentially ideas that reproduce themselves (via language or other forms of imitation) in ways that are similar in many ways to genes. The book goes on to survey various features of genes and evaluate their possible analogues in memes. Included are such daring hypotheses as: the development of imitation, and thus memes, was the impetus for all of language and for the enlargement of the human brain.

In order to develop meme-theory, Blackmore generalizes the features of genes in a way that might prove to be useful for discussions of how other kinds of replicators function in culture (I’m thinking about digital audio files, filmstrips, etc.). The other majorly cool thing in the book is her suggestion that language develops solely from imitation and the subsequent natural selection of memes. This means that if you wanted to make robots speak, you would just have to outfit them with suitable imitative abilities and a changing environment (although this seems easier than making robots able to “learn” in a general sense, it would still be pretty tough).

That last bit inspired me to try and put together a little sound art piece, which I am currently working on; I’ll post it when I’m done, with a more thorough explanation. (and hopefully a more coherent one as well).

So there, I’m back, and I’ll try to post some things that are more interesting than “what I’m reading now in brief” lists.