Category: Other Writing

Dr. Martin Luther King, the Eight Commandments, and Bending the Arc of History

Little things like this are why I love and admire MLK and, by extension, humans in general. I’d like to suggest to you that the first eight items on this list would make an *excellent* daily substitute for the 10 Commandments. If you’re not natively inclined to be Of the Book, then please consider the possibility that this constitutes an acceptable non-sectarian Watchword (if you wanna strike “pray for guidance and” from Commandment #3, I’ve got no beef with that; it all amounts to the same thing as far as me and my Magic(k)al Sky Faerie are concerned).

Remember: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice—provided that we get up every morning and put our weight towards bending that mutherfucker. It ain’t gonna bend on its own.

The 8 Commandments might read:

  1. Not all people in power are opposed to Justice. Accept goodwill on the part of many.
  2. All resources are for the use of all people. Take a vacant seat.
  3. Pray for guidance and commit yourself to complete non-violence in word and action.
  4. Demonstrate the calm dignity of our people in your actions.
  5. In all things observe ordinary rules of courtesy and good behavior.
  6. Remember that this is not a victory for us alone, but for all humanity. Do not boast! Do not brag!
  7. Be quiet but friendly; proud, but not arrogant; joyous, but not boisterous.
  8. Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a friend.

These are our commandments now. Keep them in your hearts, teach them to your children, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. Bind them as symbols on your arm. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Hear, and be careful to obey, so that it may go well with us and that we may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of our ancestors, promised us.

Amen

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s Eight Commandments

(document via Slate)

Continue reading “Dr. Martin Luther King, the Eight Commandments, and Bending the Arc of History”

The Computer that Will Decide Your Job

Episode 509: Will A Computer Decide Whether You Get Your Next Job? : Planet Money : NPR
I very worthy listen about the new computer-adaptive Myers-Briggs-ish personality tests used by hiring firms. Very high likelihood that you’ll go through the following Kübler-Ross-like stages as you listen:

  1. Amused
  2. Creeped Out
  3. Bothered by How Much Bigotry is Baked into the Resume-&-Interview Process
  4. Creeped Out Again
  5. a Desperate Need to Move into a Career Space where this Test Will Never Be a Part of your Life
  6. Acceptance

DIE HARD (its Origins), Violence, Redemption, and Xmas (Plus a Bonus Writing Tip!)

Good pal Mojo got me thinking about DIE HARD again the other day, and it brought to mind the novel that movie is based on, NOTHING LASTS FOREVER by Roderick Thorpe–which I read over Xmas last year. Below I’ve pasted a slight polishing-up of my Goodreads review of NOTHING LASTS FOREVER (which I gave 4 of 5 stars) from early this year.

Takeaway: “Xmas stories are inherently about redemption, as is Xmas, which for so many families seems to be the Hail Mary pass of the emotional calendar.”

And also this fact: As Americans we have quietly accepted–in our narratives, and in our government actions, and in our news stories, and in our lives–that the truest Redemption comes through Violence. I don’t state that as media criticism, but as Fact: The Big Win if we want to reduce the amount of high-speed lead going into bodies in this country won’t come from bickering about banning X or buying back Y or screaming about Z’s right to keep and bear As, or screeching that all the Bs are a bunch of Cs for valuing their Ds more than the lives of Es . . . or whatever. It won’t come from threats (no matter how dire) or from punishments (no matter how sever). We will significantly curb our violence when we start telling each other new stories about how to address problems with something other than Force. Full stop.

So, please, be gently–with yourself and with everyone else–on these Days of Awe.

Anyway, that got harsh, and I apologize; it’s Funseasoneveryonehappytime! So, the review:

Here’s the caveat on that rating: This book is actually 5+ for fans of DIE HARD (not the franchise, which God willing *has no fans*, but the original movie), but probably something like 3 stars for Normal Humans Not Already Wrapped Up in an Exploration of Crime Fiction and 1970s Nihilism (for those touring American crime fiction looking to get the lay of the land, I give this an honest 4 stars–and there we sit).

This book is sturdy enough–the pace is good, the bigotry relatively muted, the writing basically stays out of the way–but I’m going to go out on a limb and says that the only thing that makes it remotely interesting to the vast bulk of modern readers is that it’s the basis for DIE HARD (which, incidentally, is my favorite Christmas movie. In case it can’t go without saying, I’m not Christian–but nonetheless feel this film, both in content and mood, captures something ineffable but central to the Xmases of my youth. I can even go so far as to let DIE HARD 2 in on Xmas. But it stops there, Bruce Willy, despite you being my shiznt. For real.) But it’s NOTHING LASTS and DIE HARD taken *together* that’s so fascinating, because they’re basically Dark Twins.

DIE HARD retains the structure of NOTHING LASTS: The basic formula is the same (Problem Solver arrives to CA via plane, ends up sucked into loved one’s raucous office Xmas party, thugs invade, elevators, machine guns, cops and walkie-talkies, ho-ho-ho, &c.), all of the set-piece action sequences that make DIE HARD a delight are carried over from the movie, and both are similarly rooted in a downright iron-clad commitment to the Aristotelian Unities of time/space/action[*] They are, in essence, the same fundamental story told differently, like two bands’ alternate covers of the same ur-song. (I know, it sounds like I’m bizarrely claiming that somehow NOTHING LASTS–which came first and is the *cited source* for DIE HARD doesn’t have primacy. I am, in fact, claiming just that. Like STAR WARS vs. WHATEVER SOURCE YOU FAVOR, this story hits a Deep Place in the American psyche).

But DIE HARD and NOTHING LASTS are twins separated at birth and raised in different homes and in different time periods. DIE HARD–and this is why the DH version of the story has legs that NOTHING LASTS doesn’t–is fundamentally about the Redemptive Power of Violence (both enacting and enduring violence) in the New Year Birth Season of what, in all honesty, is sort of the craziest God you could make up. It makes the ur-story seem like some Norse myth lit only by fire in the darkest depths of the dying time. NOTHING LASTS is no less violent, no less grueling for protagonist or thrilling for the reader, but it is deeply cynical (in the way only America of the ’70s could be) and fundamentally nihilistic. It’s not about the Redemptive Power of Violence because it exists in a universe where there can be no redemption–which is also why, in contrast to DH, it doesn’t *read* as a Christmas story, despite having exactly the same timing and setting.

Xmas stories are inherently about redemption, as is Xmas, which for so many families seems to be the Hail Mary pass of the emotional calendar.

By itself, NOTHING LASTS is the sorta book you find abandoned in a beach rental, read over the course of a couple days while your kids get sunburned, then re-abandon in a motel lobby once you’ve finished the final page. But reading it against DIE HARD lets you see what’s really making DIE HARD work as an essential Xtian American text about how Violence–absorbing it and meting it out–is *the* Way to Solve Our Problems. Frankly, having them side by side answers a helluva lotta questions raised by the daily news.

Recommended, especially in this time of Giving and Receiving.

On Micro-agression and Macro-depression and Xmas/Xanukah (with bonus tracks!!!)

Hey All,
I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. This time around it’s on math and Jews and *The Holidays* and microagression and Thoth and Ganeesh and Hobby Lobby and so on. Somewhere in the later half I say something like this:

The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In It For The Money: Happy Holidays!

. . .
This is incredibly frustrating – because the equivalence, driven by a well-intentioned desire to be inclusive – is so needless. Xanukah isn’t a “Jewish Xmas.” It’s Xanukah – a relatively minor religious holiday celebrating a military victory. If anything, it’s sort of a Jewish Fourth of July – which is more apt, but just as nonsensical. Similarly, Ramadan isn’t a “Muslim Lent,” Diwali isn’t “Hindu Halloween” – or even a “Hindu Xanukah,” despite the fact that Diwali is also the “Festival of Lights.”
Inclusion is nice, but you do it by including others in the stuff you are doing, not by arguing that their things are sub-functions of yours. We’re not idiots; we haven’t failed to notice that the entirely secular “Holiday Break” from school conveniently centers around Xmas and the Gregorian calendar roll-over date, and that “Spring Break” is aimed to coincide with Easter – not Passover.
One of the principal privileges of being in the Majority is that you get to be, by definition, “normal.” You don’t find yourself constantly contradicted by outsiders – well-meaning television shows and well-wishers and folks planning office parties – as to what your holy days mean. You don’t have to wrestle with autocorrect about the spelling of your holidays and well wishes. You don’t have to disclose a lot of personal details to explain why this or that day is no good for a meeting, because no one schedules a meeting for December 25th.
. . .

BONUS GIFT! Back in the day I used to record Holiday Music of my Own Devising, because it was fun, and because when push comes to shove, from a strumming-and-singing-and-programming-sequencers perspective, there are *a lot* of great Xmas songs. Here are my offerings, in reverse chronological order. Enjoy!

(FUN FACT: I wrote this while hanging out with my infant son all day, and have played it annually ever since; my son believes it is an accepted part of the general Xmas Music Canon.)

  • Dreidel Bells (FUN FACT: The beat here is an original GameBoy running an early German Nanoloop cartridge. Both voices are obviously me, but the filters for the robot voice badly overburdened my iBook, causing significant lag–which is why Mr. Roboto struggles so badly to hit his marks.)
  • DreidelDreidelDreidel (FUN FACT: The beat here is a vintage analog Boss DR-55 once owned by POE, crammed through a heavy-metal distortion stompbox.)

    • Cyborg Cockroaches, DARPA, and Girls in STEM

    I’ve written another article for The Magazine, this time about the RoboRoach: Bug Testing — The Magazine
    Whereas my first RoboRoach article, for the Ann Arbor Chronicle, was long and thorny and wrapped in the tangled ethics of doing unnecessary surgery on what are otherwise considered pests/pet-fodder, this article is much shorter, more readable, and focused on the tech itself, its DARPA roots, and girls in STEM. It starts like this:

    The hand in the video scoops up a large beige cockroach and thrusts it into a jar of ice water. The roach struggles briefly, then grows calm as the cold anesthetizes it. It remains stoic as the hand scoops it up, sands away the waxy coating on its exoskeleton, glues down a homemade electrode bundle, and then begins surgery.
    We see only the hands of the bug surgeon, who uses Silly Putty to secure the roach to a cutting board, then perforates the thorax and inserts the first of three hair-thin silver electrodes. Following a break for another ice-water anesthetic, the hands cut down the antennae (which are hollow) and insert an electrode in each. The roach is periodically sponged off with a cotton swab; dabs of superglue secure each component.
    This is not a low-fi sci-fi YouTube film, an art project, a political statement, or a prank. This is a RoboRoach, touted by its surgeon-creators as “the world’s first commercially available cyborg.” It’s a living, breathing, radio-controlled roach designed by Backyard Brains in a cramped suite of tatty second-floor offices next to a yoga studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And you can buy one, today, for yourself or your favorite precocious niece. . . .

    The Magazine is only $2 per month (with two issues per month and full access to the archive–more than 30 issues, including another article from me, back in issue #9), and I believe you can have it for FREE for the first week.
    I.e., even if you like the wherewithal for a decent cup of joe, you can still read this article–hell, read all the articles you want for the next seven days. This particular issue has a great piece on marathons, heart attacks and caffeine, and The Magazine ran a great series on drones back in issue #13.
    If you’re digging this sort of tight, tech-ish, medium-length journalism–real journalism, where real writers actually do real research and are then held accountable by real editors with real editorial chops–consider backing The Magazine: The Book (Year One) on Kickstarter. You’ll be helping to fight the Good Fight, I’ll get a reprint fee (yeah!), and the premiums are pretty damn rad (esp. the $15 level–which is a great deal on a year’s subscription to The Magazine–and the $50, which gets you both the 200+page hardcover book and a year’s subscription).

    Miss America, the Craft of Showing Up, and Doing THE JOB


    So, I continue to write a column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle, this month focusing on Miss America 2014, the Miss America Pageant Organization, and local media (the 2014 winner, Nina Davuluri [she’s the one on the right], is a U-M alum and was in Ann Arbor on Nov. 1 for a business conference, where I interviewed her).
    The column begins by asking why I was the *only* member of the media who showed up to report on this–U-M, who hosted the event, had sent several different branches of its own internal and alumni media to cover the event, but no local paper or blog was there, nor were the Detroit Metro area papers. The column ends with me pointing out that the job of the media is to show up places and tell us what they see so that we can draw reasonable conclusions about the state of the world. In the middle, we have about 16 pages of Miss America history and analyzing Ms. Davuluri’s business and marketing tactics, as well as American “diversity.”
    Anyway, here’s a nice two-up of reactions to the column:

    The upper tweet is, obviously, Miss America. The lower tweet is from someone who writes for the local paper I called out for not showing up.
    Man, I don’t know where to start with this. First off, what’s with using the passive voice, Ace? The column wasn’t twisted by some unknown force; I twisted it. I wrote the damn thing. See, that’s the second line of the job description at the Ann Arbor Chronicle. The first line is Show the fuck up and the second is tell us what you saw.
    Beyond that, this article didn’t *twist.* It isn’t like I started out *OMFG IM SITTIN WITH A BATHING BEAUTY!!1!* and then in the final graff pulled this wicked 180 and stabbed you in the back. I started out saying “Hey local media: Get off your fucking duffs and come see what’s happening!” and then ended up saying “Hey local media: You are violating your contract with the readers by not showing up to report what’s happening!”
    I the last week I’ve thought about this a lot, because it’s been a good week to reflect on how far new media has drifted from The Job (i.e., “showing up and saying what you see”). 50 years ago a barrier-breaking US president was murdered in Dallas. The reporters who showed up to watch his parade, they could not have expected a story: There was no speech scheduled for the damn parade route; it was just a dude cruising by in a convertible. But they showed up–because that’s The Job–and something so terrible happened, something that fundamentally shook this country like nothing would until a clear-skied September morning in 2001.
    No one knew that would happen–even Oswald must have had his doubts that he’d pull it off–because none of us know what is going to happen. That’s *why* there’s a job that consists of showing up and saying what you saw, because who knows what will happen where. Like a Boy Scout (incidentally, JFK was the first Scout elected PotUS), we must Be Prepared.
    Likewise, no reporter could expect there to really be a *story* at Oswald’s funeral: Assumed murder goes in box, box goes in ground. But they showed up, ’cause that’s The Job–and several of them wound up being pall-bearers, because the funeral was so sparsely attended, and the attendees were almost all women and children.
    That’s a remarkable, weird, gonzo story. And it’s a human story. And it is a story that allows us to reflect on what it means to be American and human, and to live in the age in which we live.
    That’s the result of doing The Job, and it is why The Job is a sacred Job, just like preaching and teaching and standing next to the bed for someone’s beginning or end.
    And I was the only one who showed up to do The Job–but not because our town and our county and our region lack for people paid to do something very much like The Job. It’s just that the media has abandoned The Job, because they think they already know all the stories there are to tell, so why bother showing up? Why bother seeing what you see if you already know what you are going to write about it?
    Incidentally, it’s worth reading the comments to my column, too, because a Miss America volunteer wrote in with a counter-narrative. See, even though I did The Job, I still fell down–because I’m human, and because I’m living in the same 21st Century as all the other media people, the ones I excoriate for abandoning the Faith, and because I struggle under the same constraints of time and money and energy as every other ink-stained wretch since the dawn of the damned printing press. Just like the rest of the media, I retold a story about Lenora Slaughter–an early Miss America reformer–and racism in the pageant, a story that I’d gotten from *other* media folk. I parroted this line–because it was just *too* good not to repeat–without chasing down primary sources for verification and without digging deep enough into what I had to realize the limitations of what it really said. And so I missed one more really interesting facet to this story, and failed to give you all one more bright shard of what it means to be American then and American now.
    But still, I did The Job, and despite the title of my column, I didn’t do it for the money; I did it because it’s what I owe you for agreeing to take The Job at all. You do The Job because, in the absence of The Job, this shit is just words, words, words, full of sound and fury, but signifying fuckall.
    Amen.

    Kick In to Support THE MAGAZINE Kickstarter!

    The Magazine–a really excellent digital periodical–is doing a Kickstarter to fund an annual print edition. You should *really* consider kicking in $30, like, immediately to get a copy. Barring that, $15 is a great deal–gets you a one-year subscription at about 40 percent off–and even a buck or five helps.
    That annual print edition–which is really the brass ring on this one–is gonna be a big, fat hardcover with 130 of the most-notable articles, color glossy pictures, the whole shebang. Here’s a layout preview–which happens to feature the first article I wrote for them, about the world’s greatest aftermarket “lens” for doing old-school pinhole photography with catching-edge consumer-grade digital cameras. Backers who come in at $30 or more (as of this writing) will get the hardcover, plus DRM-free digital editions of the book. (You can back at a lower level and still get some pretty sweet swag, though. For example, if you come in at $15 you get a one-year subscription, which normally retails for ~$20–and costs, like, $24 if you buy it monthly, like I do, because I’m a damn rube).

    If you’re one of this “I Give a Damn About the Future of Long-Form Journalism and Think Pieces,” then you should be backing this project; The Magazine is basically the only forward looking periodical I’ve come across. They pay well, and the editors are meticulously ethical, extremely scrupulous, and great to work with–every story becomes the best possible version of itself.
    Also, *DISCLOSURE* if this project funds, I’ll get a reprint payment of a couple hundred dollars. They don’t *have* to do this–not with the contract I signed; they’ve already paid me for the work. They are *choosing* to do this because it’s the right thing to do. Like I said, if there’s a future in this non-fiction thing, The Magazine is that future.

    “The New Guys Always Work Overtime” Featured In a #FREE Podcast (& I’m speaking at Ignite Ann Arbor on Nov17!)


    My story “The New Guys Always Work Overtime” (which debuted in the Feb 2013 ASIMOV’S) is included in the latest StarShipSofa podcast: StarShipSofa No 312 David Erik Nelson | StarShipSofa
    A second story in this series–a novelette titled “There Was No Sound of Thunder”–will run in ASIMOV’S next summer.
    Also, I’m speaking about booze at Ignite Ann Arbor on Nov. 17. They’ve chosen the unconventional tactic of making the most erratic speaker go last, likely in an effort to clear the room prior to going into overtime and incurring additional rental fees. You should come check it out, because when I really totally flop, it is usually pretty exquisite.

    Column: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the RoboRoach”

    I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. In this latest installment we meditate upon the instantly controversial RoboRoach from Backyard Brains:
    The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In it for the Money: Cockroach Thanksgiving

    Come November, Ann Arbor’s own Backyard Brains will be shipping their educational RoboRoach kits. In just a few E-Z steps you (yes, you!) will upgrade a standard issue Blaberus discoidalis cockroach into your very own iPhone-controlled insectoid robo-slave – and just in time for the Non-Denominational Gift Giving Holiday Season!
    I know, I know, you have questions – and almost certainly some objections – when it comes to icing a live cockroach, mutilating its antennae, drilling a hole in its back, and taking control of its brain – with a goddamn phone.
    Readers, I share your moral panic. But I have walked in the Valley of Death, have been prodded with the SpikerBox, have bought coffee and a cookie for the lead roach-roboticisizer, have met their techno-insectoid minions, and here, on the far side of the vale, I want to tell you this:
    I am not worried about the kids who unwrap a Backyard Brains RoboRoach kit sometime between Thanksgiving and the end of the year; I’m worried about the kids who don’t.
    . . .

    Writing a New DIY Book

    As I mentioned before, part of my relative silence here is due to me working on a new DIY book, which is all musical instruments and noise toys (primarily electronic and wicked *awesome!*) and slated for completion sometime prior to the heat-death of our universe. For those interested in how the sausage gets made, here’s a snapshot of today’s work:
    I’m revising Project 7, which is 26 pages long. The only page that has *zero* revisions is Page 8:

    (Just in case you think that’s a function of the paucity of text on Page 8, I’ll have you know that I have a page with just *nine* words on it, and *it* has red ink.)
    Pretty much every other page looks more like good ole Page 23:

    *Everything* I write goes like this. I write a page, only to scrawl basically an entirely new page overtop that typed page, then merge the two and cut 1/6th of it. That’s a process. It’s like I’m making Oreos from scratch only so I can crunch them up to be Oreo crust for a Jell-o Pudding Pie.
    Anyway, if you’re ever feeling totally overwhelmed at what a hash your project seems to be mid-build, just look at Page 23 and say: “Christ; at least I’m better at this than Dave is at writing!”