Marcus' World

Twitter Knows When You're Happy

Today's news of a large study of tweets, as a way to gauge people's rise and fall in moods, made me happy.  I'm not as concerned as Gothamist with whether the study is properly scientific; 'Ist claims that it's not, but doesn't say why.   Rather, my beef is that the paper will appear in Science and not everyone who wants to can read it. 

That said, here is a perfect example of how all those supposedly frivolous Web 2.0 natterings can lead to real research.  There's a reason the Library of Congress is archiving tweets--because they are now part of our written record.  It's a new era everyone; get on board.

The Death Penalty and American Shame

Yesterday's execution of Troy Davis should never have happened, whether or not he was guilty.  State-sanctioned killing is reminiscent of the gulag, and far from a mark of living in a civilized society.  As I've argued ever since ninth grade, while debating my friend Todd, you can't kill people to show that killing people is wrong.

In the 2008 Presidential campaign, Michelle Obama was pilloried for saying that the nomination of Barack Obama was the first time in her adult lifetime she'd been proud to be an American.  But I knew where she was coming from.  What's to recommend a nation that thinks that justice equals the death chamber?

Taking Stock 10 Years Later

On September 11, 2001 Helen's mom, dad and grandmother were supposed to return to Hong Kong after coming to Evanston for a wedding celebration we'd hosted ten days earlier.  Our wedding date was Feb. 27, but we celebrated with friends and family on September 1.  Of course, Helen's folks weren't able to get home and had to wait several more days before they could. 

This was the extent of any direct impact from the events of that day, and given the losses sustained by many people it feels triflingly small to even write down.  As a nation we've gone through a lot this past decade.  Most people have clung to a narrative of American superiority, and we ended up launching an ill-conceived war in Iraq--ostensibly but not truthfully connected to the attacks of September 11--based on that premise.  We properly acknowledge the bravery of first responders and the pain suffered by family members whose loved ones never came home.  And we've struggled mightily, and admirably, not to implicate all of Islam--President Bush was resolute on this point, which is something his critics are apt to forget.

The harder questions about whether America's geopolitical actions around the world stimulated--not justified--the acts of Sep. 11 remain hard to ask. This will always be the case except in liberal audiences in which everyone already agrees with each other. 

I see myself as a human first and an American second, just as I did before Sep. 11, 2001.  Patriotism blends with jingoism, and I've never known how to gracefully acknowledge what happened on that day in a way that is respectful of my fellow citizens but also true to myself.

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Ten years ago I was still studying for my library degree, and am not even sure if I'd heard of the National Library of Medicine (NLM).  A year later Helen and I moved to Washington DC and I began my fellowship at NLM.  Two years after that it was on to New York City, where the wounds of September 11 were still fresh and it appeared--based on the petty squabbling that is a hallmark of Big Apple politics--that nothing would ever get built at Ground Zero. 

The Republicans came to town just after we arrived for their nominating convention, a deeply crass bit of political theater since New York's glorious urbanity is a rejection of everything the GOP stands for.  We protested by the convention grounds and eventually campaigned for John Kerry, all to no avail.

Three years later we moved from one liberal bubble (Manhattan) to another (Berkeley).  Helen started business school and I finally had a job as a library manager at UCSF.  A year and a half after that Helen and I were done, felled by diverging values and understandings of what makes a good life.  I drifted for a year, deeply disconsolate much of the time and convinced that I would die alone. But Pi Wen and I met in early 2010, and life is great again. 

Soon after meeting Pi Wen the job at Samuel Merritt came along, and now I'm a library/educational technology director.  That's been a great growth experience, but during my time at Samuel Merritt I've learned the wisdom of not attaching too much meaning to one's "work" as opposed to one's "life."  It's not about work/life balance, exactly--more about setting the terms of what defines you, rather than being defined externally.  We only get one shot in this present form, whether or not you believe in reincarnation (and I don't). Better make it a good one.

The same is true for all of us, Americans or otherwise.  Whatever we think of the larger political forces or meanings behind September 11, in our daily lives we can all be kinder, be more courteous, be better.  That's always worth striving for, on this day and every other.

September 11 and Iraq, a Decade Later

Next Sunday will be the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.  On that fateful Tuesday I was living in Evanston and working for the Massage Therapy Foundation. Three days later I led a group of my colleagues to a memorial service at Alice Millar Chapel on Northwestern's campus, and that night was part of the throng that lined Ridge Avenue for Evanston's official candlelight remembrance.

At the time we were living in a studio on the top floor of a downtown apartment building.  I briefly put a small American flag up on the door, before taking it down for fear of being perceived as jingoistic.  Right after the attacks there was a spate of anti-Muslim fervor throughout Chicagoland, and the nation, and I saw that little flag as an implicit endorsement--us against them--of that hostility. 

Some things never change.  Just this year Osama bin Laden was killed, and I was horrified by the jubilation before the White House gates. Just the other week a friend at work told me her view that national flags are really just large gang symbols, and I heartily agreed. Then again, this is my country and--like my efforts to mark the tragedy in its immediate aftermath--I want to do my part to make it better.

Ten years is a good time to take stock.  In the NYT Magazine slated to be published in print next Sunday--exactly ten years later--Bill Keller reconsiders his support for the war in Iraq. He concludes that, on balance, the war was unjustified.  Iraq is free of Hussein but still must endure random killings; and the post-invasion rebuilding was arrogantly and tragically botched. That said, Keller still thinks that the intelligence available in 2003--namely, those supposed weapons of mass destruction--means that his support of the war at the time was justifiable, or at least understandable.

I never believed that "evidence," not for one second. President Bush was behind it, and there was no doubt that his people wanted war.  I don't think Bush is evil; the trouble was fixation upon a single course, with no room for dissenting opinion. 

The greatest equivocation was the connection of the 9/11 attacks, which were nurtured in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the need to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  This was a spurious connection made from hubris. In 2003 Bush was in the middle of a first term that had been handed to him by the Supreme Court, after losing the popular vote to Al Gore.  I didn't and don't see that first term as fully legitimate. 

And it was then, in the middle of that disreputable first term, that the war began. Sometimes--sorry, Bill Keller--you know whether something is true by noting the messenger.