At the same Gracenet dinner that I met Paul, I learned a thing or two from the visiting speaker, AnnaLee Saxenian. The brain-drain of high-skill technology graduates from China and India to Silicon Valley is only half the story. The brains also go back home, taking their newfound ideas with them. Saxenian writes of “brain circulation”, the trans-Pacific process of cross-fertilization, through which Silicon Valley gets socially networked to urban centres throughout Asia.
Awww
Three cheers for Massachusetts.
We’re all going to die
I’ve just met a lovely man who works for the US Geological Survey. Given his profession, it’s unfortunate that the best way I can think of describing him is “down to earth”. Still, he had some interesting news for those of us living, as I do, in the Bay Area. We’re all going to die.
Found on a scrap of paper in a University of Cape Town filing cabinet, ca 1998
There have been many painful things happening at UCT. One of the most painful was the destruction of the jobs of hundreds of workers. When it wrote about this, the University Paper agreed that there was pain. But the only pain it mentioned was the pain of the Vice Chancellor [Mamphela Ramphele – partner of the late Steve Biko, key figure in the Black Consciousness movement, now a director at the World Bank], the person who insisted on that destruction. Showing that she was a ruthless manager won her some admirers and created new opportunities for her. But the Paper also told us about the workers who were being retrenched.
Continue reading “Found on a scrap of paper in a University of Cape Town filing cabinet, ca 1998”
In Memoriam
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, co-editor of the excellent This Bridge Called My Back, author of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, and queer rights activist, died on Saturday.
Liquor
Talking of liquor stores, the Reddy family of Berkeley, a cabal of exploiters of various stripes, have been denied a liquor license in their shop because of “moral turpitude“. Splendid.
Red Guard on the Microphone
The past couple of days have been fairly musical. I’ve long noticed that the one place that I can reliably hear morose music is my local Albertson’s. The musical loop goes something like this: Annie Lennox’s Why slows things down, and is followed by Nora Jones’ Don’t Know Why, which cools things down a bit more, and then hands over to 10cc’s I’m Not in Love, which brings us inevitably to Mike and the Mechanic’s The Living Years and then back to Annie Lennox. This onslaught of low-grade Weltschmerz makes grocery shopping miserable. Of course, as with every facet of the corporate retail experience, one person’s misery is another’s pile of cash. The music is designed to create a solitary and self-indulgent sensory bubble. It’s a bubble in which you’re encouraged to wallow. Inside the bubble, it smells of donuts, and it has Annie Lennox reminding you of that crappy breakup/tragic moment/melodramatic appeal to the heavens that you thought you’d long forgotten. The solution to all this is at hand, of course – make your choice of anything from the chilled plenitude of the supermarket shelves.
Uncommunicative action
I’ve a long track record of being dressed funny. My mother enjoyed trussing me in earthy corduroy, tight dungarees, and cotton prints and, although I atoned by wearing nothing but black polyester for six adolescent months, I still feel that my mum’s fashion experiments are responsible for my vulnerability to the Green Party, and my fondness for herbal tea.
The Nature of the Job
Mark Steel’s thoughts in yesterday’s Independent on representation and torture are splendid.
So maybe someone should work out whether there’s a pattern here. If it was discovered that every week a dustman had locked a couple of residents in a wheelie-bin and administered electric shocks to their rectum, local authorities might ponder whether the problem wasn’t just the individuals but something in the nature of the job.
Dynasties
While the US wets itself with the prospect of another election catastrophe, US voters should be looking to the world’s largest democracy for inspiration. It would seem that the Indian public have responded to BJP’s fundamentalism with savvy and wit. Both the BJP and the Congress (I) party have shown themselves unfit for anything but compradorism. The voters have shown their disapproval of the BJP and Congress by voting for a range of third parties. The markets have shown their disapproval of public opinion by whaling on the Rupee, and the Bombay stock exchange is down a couple of per cent. But with the full results still a long way off, and with plenty of time for the world’s largest pool of computer engineers to play with the electronic voting machines, we won’t know the results for days, if ever.