Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Author: tokyokevin

  • Ukraine, Europe, the UK, and the US

    Image from artidea.org

    I am reading Timothy Snyder‘s book The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (Guardian, NYTimes review). It is incredibly depressing. I keep coming back to it because, as the Guardian says, it is “unignorable.”

    Snyder is a Professor of History at Yale, longtime chronicler of Tyranny. I bought his book after listening to a very insightful interview at Slate with Jacob Weisberg.

    Snyder outlines the tactics Vladimir Putin has used to gain control of Russia through destabilization and othering, and then export chaos around the world. Snyder postulates a dichotomy between nations and groups. Those that think progress is inevitable (like the EU proponents and US liberals) and those that feel we are running in circles for eternity (Russia and US conservatives).

    I won’t get into details here on how Putin has risen to power and what the ramifications are. I am now reading the historical view of the Ukraine, the Crimea, and Russia and how Putin was able to start a war and take parts of the Ukraine. Especially depressing is looking at how all this starts to destabilize Europe, especially because they are not responding.

    Putin tried the tactic that worked in Russia, demonizing homosexuals as agents of the West, bent on violating the “pure” Russia (Rus) built 1,000 years ago by Valdamarr (Volodemere) and rescued by the current Vladimir. (Funny, though, Valdemarr was from the Ukraine.) Since the Ukraine had enjoyed almost 2 decades of peace and was working on the rule of law, they (especially the young) were looking toward Europe. But as soon as Paul Manafort got Yakunovych into power, Russia tried to strong-arm then bribe, then worked to depose him. The people resisted, and continue to resist with a war that hobbles on. Putin’s main goal of destabilization and distrust of authority of the rule of law is slowly working, as we can see from this recent VICE account below.

    If we look at the actions of Trump through this lens, it becomes clear that the main goal of Putin is extended, whether there is any collusion or not. More when I finish the book.

  • Short URLs: Goo.gl going under

    Graphic from Strategic Planet

    News today (and not it is not April Fool’s) is that goo.gl URL shortener. Here is the message:

    Starting March 30, 2018, we will be turning down support for goo.gl URL shortener. From April 13, 2018 only existing users will be able to create short links on the goo.gl console. You will be able to view your analytics data and download your short link information in csv format for up to one year, until March 30, 2019, when we will discontinue goo.gl. Previously created links will continue to redirect to their intended destination.

    I have hundreds of shortened URLs. They are good for making easy links for students. And everyone else. And I have a year to continue, and the links will continue after that, so not such a big deal.

    Alternatives: I like bit.ly better in many ways, you can make a custom URL. But they don’t do QR codes. All my students have phones, and using QR codes makes things even easier for them. Here are some alternatives (Thanks, Richard.)

    I have discovered tiny.cc, which looks like a spoof of tinyURL, one of the first shorteners. It looks a bit iffy, but Web of Trust says they are moderately safe. The neat thing is that they incorporate QR codes right into the process, making it perfect for me. The add-ons for a pro account looks like they may be monitoring traffic a little too closely. Will keep you updated, but this is the direction I am looking for now.

    Kind of reminds me of the problems with RSS readers, but that is for another post.

  • Media Literacy Debate

    My brain hurts. Dana Boyd gave the keynote speech (1 hour) at SXSWedu (an annual media conference with an educational add-on). I first caught wind of the controversy through Stephen Downes’ blog. I read Dana Boyd’s original post, and a response by Benjamin Doxtdator.

    Before reading Dana Boyd’s follow-up on Medium, I decided to watch the video, the whole hour. This is where I am now. She has raised issues that I had not considered and am still working on integrating into my framework. A challenge. The reason this is so important is that I teach English in Tokyo and use a lot of tech doing so.

    Slide from Dana Boyd’S SXSWedu Keynote of web page by Elita Saulle at teachingrocks.ca

    Moreso, this year, I am concentrating on providing a wide range of online opportunities in most of my classes this year.  I have added a series of activities (self-evaluation, introspection on motivation, communication, and learning, along with goal setting and planning) to give students both more freedom and more autonomy, and make sure they have the tools to handle it. Then I let them loose (well, with a semi-curated set of content) to explore and work with the results of those first few activities.

    I am not so sure I can do that, now. I really need to rethink how I approach my use of online materials. I have moved away from teaching English directly as a subject, and promote self-learning of English by using it as a thinking tool. I can get away with this because most of my students are solid intermediate level and above. But the concerns she raises mean I have to look at how a non-native speaker should treat the media landscape (ie the web). In some ways, my students and the culture in Japan can (and have) teach me about how to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time and not go crazy. The problem is that this ability is not usually applied to content and interaction on the web.

    Discounting everything is the road to nihilism. Blind belief is the road to becoming a patsy. But foisting your opinion, even with scientific evidence, is also not an answer. Recognizing that individuals and institutions such as shock vloggers and Cambridge Analytica play the media regularly to their own ends, and more important work to devalue the media and all other forms of authority is becoming an indispensable skill. This is Howard Rheingold’s crap detection on steroids and taken to another orbit.

    One of the keys is being able to recognize toxic information and walking away. Ignoring things is something I have been taught is completely wrong. But now, with manufactured content designed to create a visceral gut reaction and a response, realizing the Buddhist idea of impermanence may help. Lots more thinking to do first, though. And learn how to discuss with people who disagree with me while avoid being gaslighted.

  • Altered Carbon: Bad Good SciFi

    Netflix continues to push the envelope, with a greater variety of TV that appeals to a wider audience, especially one that has tired of typical fare. It is another golden age of TV, now called streaming video.

    One example of this is Altered Carbon.  It is cheesy. The plot is a mess. It is a tale as old as the hills, set 350 years in the future. A world where your mind (and soul?) are downloaded and you use “sleeves” until they die. But you get put into another.

    The story starts with an insurgent getting reawoken after 250 years on a hard disk, doing time. Oddly enough, he can operate and understand everyone without a hitch. There is gratuitous sex, lots of violence, way too much chop-sockey. And yet, it all hangs together.

    Part of the charm is the cast, a very multi-national group. Long stretches of dialog occur in Spanish, German and other languages. One “sleeve” of the main character is the Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman (the assistant detective in The Killing), and his sister (as an adult) is one of my favorite actresses, Tibetan/Australian Dichen Lackmann. And a host of other not-so-well-known actors who try to breathe life into the weird script that is all over the place (sci-fi allows for lots of inserted backstory).

    The other part is the worldbuilding. It is an interesting world that has consequences. That is an extremely hard thing to do, as Charles Stross points out. Even though he is an SF author, one of the reasons he no longer reads much SF is that the worldbuilding is not consistent. I don’t mind a few inconsistencies, if they propel the plot forward, as is the case of Altered Carbon, in its exploration of how death makes us human.

  • Cormac McCarthy on Language

    Cormac McCarthy, author of novels like No Country for Old Men and The Road, is, believe it or not, interested in physics and complex systems. Writing in Nautilus (great publication), he muses on language and the unconscious in The Kekulé Problem.

    The shoehorn into the discussion is that people solve problems when they are asleep. Kekulé is only the most famous for this; falling asleep and solving the problem of the chemical structure of Benzine. The point is that the image he saw, that revealed the structure, did not contain any language. That is because it is from the unconscious.

    Read the article to find out why the unconscious and language are separate. Is it biology, did it evolve, or are they simply incompatible? McCarthy jumps between psychology, biology, philosophy in his quest for an answer. He gets help by discussing with his friend and colleague David Krakauer, both from the Santa Fe Institute (home of really smart people). He ends up solving the problem after a ten-hour lunch with Krakauer and yes, some sleep.

    This article reminds me of two other books. The Third Culture was the first collection of essays I read by John Brockman, a literary agent. He assembled a collection of scientists (Gould, Dawkins, Minsky, Schank, Pinker, Penrose, Smolin, Kauffman, and especially Gell-Mann, also at Santa Fe) to answer questions usually reserved for theologians and philosophers. C.P. Snow postulated that Science and Literature would merge into a “third culture.” It had a profound effect on my thinking. Brockman puts a similar book out each year, addressing a new question. Find him at the Edge.

    Language is metaphor, and that is what makes us human. China Mieville writes of an alien race inhabiting a trading outpost at the edge of the civilized universe in Embassytown. The heroine watches as the Ariekei try to lie and fail, repeatedly. They are not built that way. Their Language requires people to speak in two voices at the same time. Humans that are conjoined twins fill the role of Ambassadors. When a linguistic “virus” invades, all hell breaks loose.

    Which brings us back to language. It language itself just a virus, a parasite, riding on the cerebellum and medulla, causing the cerebrum to develop grotesquely large? Read McCarthy.