HotShot Blog

If there's one lesson to be learned from Katrina, it's that all is not well in America. 50 years after passage of civil rights, the black/white fault still permeates society. WaPo today has an excellent essay on the way poor minorities are denigrated and cast aside in popular culture.

They are the Other, these victims of Katrina.

An often-invisible underclass, now front and center: Evacuees from New Orleans receive personal hygiene bags before resuming their long relocation trip to Dallas.
An often-invisible underclass, now front and center: Evacuees from New Orleans receive personal hygiene bags before resuming their long relocation trip to Dallas. (By Scott Saltzman -- Bloomberg News)
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And in this country, the Other is black. Poor. Desperate.

Mainstream America too often demonizes the Other because, well, we've been conditioned to do so. And because it's easier to put people in a box and then shove it in the corner, away from view. Then it becomes their problem, not ours. To talk about race, for those who are weary of it, is to invite glazed-over eyes and stifled yawns -- or even hostility.

Whether it's African-Americans looting while white people find food, evangelical leaders warning how homosexuality is destroying the moral fabric of America, or Pat Buchanan blaming immigration for all social problems, it has always been popular to box a certain category of Americans as "those people" who ruin things for the rest of us.

The tragedy of Katrina has brought to the front and center how this social undercurrent has a real impact on Americans. Wealthier, mostly white Americans evacuated New Orleans and stayed in hotels during the disaster. Poorer, mostly black Americans rode out the storm, only to be devastated when the levees broke. The response from a government that cares little about social programs was minimal. After all, they believe in personal responsibility. But it became clear to all Americans that these people weren't there because they didn't try hard enough in life or that they were somehow too stupid to leave the city early. These people were devastated because they didn't have cars, they needed to work, and they had no where else to go.

For many Americans it is simply not possible to understand how the poor live. Our politics suffers as a result. It's easy to talk about reduced funding for social programs and disaster relief in the comfort of a suburban McMansion. I hope that a silver lining from Katrina is a larger societal awareness of the American underclass. It is time we stopped ignoring these people and work to give them the respect all Americans deserve.

This post is about something sorely lacking in our society, leadership. People like me often criticize Bush as being a terrible leader, and at no point was that clearer than during the week following the hurricane. While thousands died, starved, or were raped and murdered, the president dressed up like a country singer and posed with a guitar in a cheap photo-op. Even when he finally went to New Orleans on Friday, he avoided the hardest hit areas, viewing from a distance in a helicopter.

In the previous two decades we may have accepted poor leadership. There were no major wars, terrorists were only beginning to make themselves known, and most people were happily employed and enjoying a boom.

But in these trying times, we need solid leadership. Not just from our president, but from ordinary Americans. We can no longer afford to be a nation of couch potatoes, indifferent and resigned to whatever fate bestows upon them. Our schools are crumbling, poverty is rising, the nation remains unprepared for any major terrorist attack, and globalization has destroyed the fundamental building blocks of our society, including our families.

It will take much more than one president to restore this great nation to grandeur. It will take a concerted effort by each of us. Don't think you can make a difference? You are wrong.

I recently got scammed by an apartment listing service called Coastal Apartments, Inc. They reeled me in with a semi-fradulent posting on craigslist.com then promised me I would find a great 1 bedroom apartment within my budget. After I paid the $244 fee, I was completely ignored. My phone calls were not returned. The listings I received were for rented apartments and unavailable short-term corporate leases. After a week of work, I looked at only one apartment. I decided to call it quits.

Except that they refused to give me my money back. I called, wrote, and stated my case that they had misled me. All I received was an insulting offer of $30. I could have walked away with this measly amount. Instead, I took action. I made flyers stating my story and stood outside the company's doors waiting to pass them out to customers. I was met with initial hostility, threats of police action and lawsuits. But in the end, I was able to get over 75% of my money back thanks to my actions. Much better than the arrogant $30 they had offered me.

Real leadership requires that we stand up for our values in all aspects of life. It requires that we not be satisfied with what we're given in every situation, but that we work harder to make things better. A Democratic president, congress, supreme court, state legislatures, governor, etc will certainly help set this country on the right path. But to make substantial progress, we will need much more. We need a nation of leaders.

Today was the first day of class. Technically, classes started last week, but since I missed the first Probability Limit Theorems lecture, today was the first day for me.

I'm auditing two courses this semester: Probability Limit Theorems and a seminar in derivatives. Limit theorems is all the Ph.D. level probability theory you would ever want to learn (and the theory you would never want to learn).

So today I found out that for probability measures, convergence in measure (ie convergence in probability) implies convergence almost everywhere. Of course, for general measure spaces, this is not true.

Consider the example f_n (x) = 1 on [n,n+1] ; 0 otherwise

This function converges to 0 for every x, ie f_n (x) -> 0 as n->infinity. But the integral of f_n is 1 for all n, so f_n does not converge in Lebesgue measure.

Over the last four years, conservatives have held nearly absolute power over the federal and most state governments. The result: a failed foreign policy, exploding budget deficits, increased poverty, and the continued erosion of the basic foundations of society.

Americans are finally beginning to realize the failure of conservatism to address the challenges facing our society. A solid majority now conclude the war in Iraq was a mistake and that it has made us less safe. The economy continues to benefit relatively few, while real wages fall for most working Americans. And despite conservative rhetoric about fiscal discipline, spending has skyrocketed both on defense and non-defense items.

Even the Republican base is finally starting to peel away from the Washington establishment and voice dissent. Every major poll now shows Bush at or under 40% approval. The drop arose not from Democrats or Independents changing their mind, but from 10% of Republicans who no longer support their president. Republicans like this columnist who expresses outrage over the priorities of Washington Republicans.

There are two types of big government. There's big-government liberalism, in which the government administers broad-based entitlements (Social Security, Medicaid) and provides services collectively that individuals can't purchase on their own (police protection, roads, public parks, etc.). Has this vision suffered from excess and waste? Of course. But it has raised the standard of living for most Americans. The elderly can't buy affordable health insurance on the private market, and most individuals can't purchase their own personal police or fire protection. At the very least, big-government liberalism's heart is in the right place.

There's nothing good about big-government conservatism. It's an iron triangle of politicians, lobbyists and industry wallowing in the spoils of government contracting and favoritism linked to campaign contributions. The recipient of big-government liberalism is likely to be a 90-year-old who can't get out of bed, or a pregnant teen in need of pre-natal care. The recipient of big-government conservatism is a Halliburton executive or someone who lobbies on Halliburton's behalf.

Rundio's point is resonating across America in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It became clear over the past weeks how eliminating and defunding working government programs can have an egregious impact.

In fact, even before Katrina, national opinion has been shifting in favor of good government. Chris Bowers wrote an article back in February that the GOP base has grown to accept government programs. In the latest Pew study, only 46% of Republicans believed that government is always wasteful and inefficient, slightly less than the 49% of Democrats.

There is no indication yet that shifting attitudes will favor Democrats over the coming years. But one thing is clear. As E.J. Dionne and many other columnists now write, the era of Bush conservatism is over.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness. ... The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

This country had forgotten that most government programs and services that we enjoy today were erected to solve problems that existed in the past. Social Security kept the elderly from starving on the streets. Food stamps and school lunch programs help ensure that children get adequate nutrition even if through no fault of their own they grow up in poor families. Medicare is the most popular insurance plan in the country.

Katrina served as a painful reminder of why we need these programs. With a solid majority now opposed to conservative policies, Washington will soon have to change its priorities.

Time to celebrate ye landlubbers, that be. Tis Talk Like a Pirate Day. Gyarrrrr. Hand me a bottle of rum or I'll send ye off to Davy Jones' locker!

I didn't get to blog on it earlier, but on Tuesday, September 20, 1980, the cutest girl in the world was born.

Happy Birthday!

In The Grapes of Wrath, Joe Davis' boy is a tractor driver who tears down tenants' homes for the bank. He is portrayed as selling his soul for the riches of the evil bank, an allusion which is obvious if you connect the name Joe Davis' boy to Judis and the last supper.

Western literature is replete with Christian references. Biblical allusions abound not only in works such as John Donne's Holy Sonnets, but even in a pro-communist narrative of Steinbeck. It is only fitting then that if we are to expect Americans to learn Western literature, they should have the tools to understand it. For many young men and women who grew up in religious Christian families, this is no problem. But those who are less religious or non-Christian are at a distinct disadvantage. For myself, I felt frustrated to learn that I had completely misinterpreted a reading passage on the AP English exam because I did not understand the religious connotations.

We need secular Bible education in the context of reading literature. A new textbook has been written to help schools do just that.

"The Bible and Its Influence," released last week in Washington, is designed to meet constitutional standards and to convey the Scriptures' broad influence on Western civilization. Covering Old and New Testaments, it presents the biblical narratives, characters, and themes as well as their cultural influences.

Students may gain a more nuanced understanding of Shakespeare, with his 1,300 biblical references; or grasp the import of the Exodus to the African-American experience and musical heritage; or learn how the Bible shaped Abraham Lincoln's vision. They may even recognize a biblical origin for their hometown - Corpus Christi, New Canaan, and Salem, for example.

The new textbook "treats faith perspectives with respect, and ... informs and instructs, but does not promote religion," says Chuck Stetson, the Project's founder and chairman.

Of course, I understand concerns many would have with any kind of Bible education class. Taught by the wrong kind of teacher, it has the potential for proslytezing. But the disservice done by limiting any kind of study of religion to non-Judeo-Christian faiths is too great to ignore.

Ok, this pisses me off. Transportation agencies are going after a website that provides subway map downloads for ipod.

A lawyer for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority sent Bright a terse "cease and desist" letter in mid-September demanding he immediately remove the New York City subway map from his Web site.

Another letter followed on Sept. 21 from the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, instructing Bright to take down his BART system map.

Both agencies said copyrights they held to the maps barred anyone from repackaging and redistributing them without permission.

Heavens forbid people can actually use your fucking transportation. In New York, subway maps are free anyways. That's right. You can walk into any subway station and pick up a free subway map. But having convenient access on your ipod, that's heresy!