Sharing the wealth

I found a few cool links and things online today to which I thought I'd direct your attention.

First, Google has an "In-House Philosopher." I want that job. I found this out by listening to a TedTalk by Damon Horowitz. I like to listen to them during the job search-cover letter-resume writing process. You can find the talk here and find out more here.

Next, I found this amazing artist whose work you should check out. He makes art using data, digital technology, and crowdsourcing. Wikipedia says crowdsourcing is "the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a 'crowd'), through an open call." The artist's name is Aaron Koblin.
His work is seriously amazing on both visual and conceptual aesthetic levels. Really. His bio says:

Aaron Koblin is an artist specializing in data and digital technologies. Aaron's work takes real-world and community generated data and uses it to reflect on cultural trends and the changing relationship between humans and technology. He received the National Science foundation's first place award for science visualization and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He made Radiohead's "House of Cards" video and two of his other music video collaborations have been Grammy-nominated. In 2010 Aaron was the Abramowitz Artist in Residence at MIT and currently leads the Data Arts Team in Google’s Creative Lab.

To find out why this post has a "sheep" tag, check out his TedTalk and website.

Ball and Chain

I've gotten so used to needing a huge bag all the time, my cute purse never gets any use. I usually haul around my computer, notepad, folders and readings, at least one nasty break-your-back law book, and the usual assortment of nerdy necessities like pen, highlighter, colored tabs and sticky notes. Then, of course there is breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. And usually I have another bag with gym gear. I'm a bag lady!

I imagine a life after graduation when I carry charming little satchels that contain little more than some keys and pretty lip goop. I'll be able to tuck it under my arm, sprint for a bus or get a real hug hello from someone. Quite literally, finishing school will liberate me from three years of weight on my shoulders.

Rene Descartes was a silly man in a chair - mind and body are not separate.

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Library of Congress

Nerd Alert:

Yesterday I went to the Library of Congress for a tour organized by work. We also got the special tour, the tour of the law library of congress. It was so cool! We saw a whole bunch of rare books from the law library including one of Ben Franklin's printings of the Constitution. A copy of the Constitution in Dutch. A copy of the Constitution in Cherokee. The language of Cherokee Indians was actually made up and written specifically for being able to write the Constitution. The sounds have no relation to the written words. The words stand for syllables. And, the words are a mix of Cyrillic and Germanic written forms. The rare collections part of the law library also has a whole section of international texts on rule of law. How cool! I am going to make an appointment to go back and see it. I touched books from the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s. Oooo. Aaaah.

From there, we went to the regular Library of Congress tour. Pretty cool, too (almost as cool as the law library). The building itself is beautiful with stained glass, sculpture and meaningful art. The statue figurines are all studying various things. One of the ceilings had the three most prized professions written in various stones -- Medicine, Theology, and - you guessed it -- law. I thought that was pretty cool. Body, Mind, and how those two (body + mind = person) relate to others. We also saw the first map that ever had the label 'America' on our big ol' mass of land. Apparently, the 'brary bought it for $10 million. That's right. 12 pieces of paper for $10 million. They also have Thomas Jefferson's personal library collection. Actually, it's most of the collection but not all because some of it got burned back during the civil revolution. He had a huge philosophy and law section. Hurrah!

The guide said there were over a hundred names of famous academics, intellectuals, important people, etc. written in the walls/ceilings, but that only 1 of them was a woman. What made me ever angrier was that the tour guide (an old man) didn't even bother to tell us the woman's name or what she did! The irony! Telling us how in the olden days people didn't respect women as intellectuals or leaders, but then not telling us about the rare one that they did revere! I was going to ask, but another girl on our tour interrupted him and asked first.

I wish I could spend many, many days in there.

I like books. Books are my friends. :)

Speaking of, right now I'm reading Armageddon by Leon Uris. He's one of my favorite authors. I just love his stories, I love learning (his books are mainly creative non-fiction/historical fiction). I love that he writes about Jews. I love that his books are epic. What are you reading, besides my bloggie ;) ?

Call it what it is

In my best interest, I am going to try to write more about my "professional" thoughts. Part of why I started this blog was to explain concepts I struggle to understand as a way both to make myself figure it out and to make myself be able to explain it in "real people" terms. So! Here is a thought I have been wrestling with this week from my first class of Introduction to Human Rights.

Human rights are a way to organize society. We know -- have come to agree -- that the fairest, most moral way to organize society is by guaranteeing all people equal opportunity and enjoyment to some 50-odd human rights. A system of implementing, enforcing, and upholding these human rights creates rules for ourselves that do not just give order and expectation. The rules also will produce the maximum happiness for each individual and for the totality of humanity.

That human rights exist is a fairly well-accepted notion around the world. Most international organizations, countries and individuals accept that there are certain entitlements due to all humans by virtue of the fact that they are human.

What human rights exist is also well-settled. People, states, international organizations all pretty much accept the human rights that are laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For example, everyone has the rights to life, liberty, security of person, education, health, and the right to work. Other rights that I particularly endorse are that everyone has the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. While it is a declaration (non-binding), not a treaty (binding on its signatories), the document truly does serve as a foundation for accepted international norms.

So we know human rights exist and we know what they are. The problem comes in figuring out if an action is in accordance with, implements, or enforces what we know are human rights. Context without content.

The issue (finally!) I was trying to understand is why people try to add an extra label to each human right. People like to classify each human right as a particular type: "civil/political," "economic," "self-determination," or "social/cultural." First, I hate this added layer of linguistic fluff. Using different words can be a way to avoid enforcement. If a law upholds the "human right" to leisure time, but someone's case argues for their "economic right" to leisure time, then the law does not apply. Call it what it is.

Second, we run into this problem where now we're not sure if these new classifications become their own single-standing human rights, or if they are sub-categories under the overarching category of "human right." Should we forget about the "human" part and just start calling them "social," "economic," "political" rights? Take, for example, what is going on with indigenous rights. Are those human rights? Are they socio-cultural rights? They also involve civil/political and economic issues, so maybe they are "political" or "economic" rights. Or, maybe indigenous rights are a sui generis framework of rights wholly apart from human rights. Unclear, people, unclear! If we didn't have the stupid classifications, we wouldn't have these linguistic ambiguities that actually cause conceptual ambiguity (weird that sometimes words that come after a thought can "go back" and change what the thought was in the first place). Call it what it is.

Finally, I find these distinctions to be a wholly arbitrary farce. The example given in class was that the right to healthcare is an economic right. Never in a million years would I have first classified healthcare as a right that has to do with money. How is it that my right as a human to have a physically healthy body and sound mind can be classified -- and classified solely -- as a monetary issue? Certainly, in the United States, anyway, healthcare has come to be intertwined with financial concerns both on the part of the individual (access) and the state (burden). But, I do not think that is the essence of the right.

What about the right to refuse healthcare? Or communities that don't use money? Or communities whose Shaman or Medicine Man doesn't charge money? Or a group of peoples whose cultural values deem "healthcare" to be something wholly different from the Western conception of "cure" -- an Eskimo peoples believe the highest form of respect to an ailing elder is to kill them before their honorable life degenerates. My point is, why don't we call human rights by the names that they already have? Rather than presupposing what content must fill the context by using our Western, artificial classifications, we should call it what it is.

a word or two with you

When I was young, I was always told to look up words when I'm reading. I don't remember that I paid heed to the suggestion, but now I do. I love words, their etymology, and learning some symbolic connection between sound, evolution, meaning and sight of a word. Here are some good words to mull over that I've come across lately. Okay, the last one I just put on there because I love it and want everyone else to love it, too:

kaffeklatsch - kaf·fee·klatsch (kŏf'ē-klăch', -kläch', kô'fē-)

n.

1. A casual social gathering for coffee and conversation.

megalomania - meg·a·lo·ma·ni·a (mĕg'ə-lō-mā'nē-ə, -mān'yə)

n.

1. A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.
2. An obsession with grandiose or extravagant things or actions.

diphthong - dif-thawng

n.
A complex speech sound or glide that begins with one vowel and gradually changes to another vowel within the same syllable, as (oi) in boil or (ī) in fine.



philosophy - φιλοσοφία [Greek] "phil - o- sophia"

n.
1. love of wisdom

2. the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.

3. a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs.

4. investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.

5. the critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.

6. the discipline comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.

7. a system of values by which one lives.

Onward and upward

Hurrah!

In the past few days I was accepted onto the Denver Journal for International Law and Policy. Technical law-loser talk is "I wrote on the journal." This is great news for me after the hassle and complete agony of the Candidacy process. The whole process felt like self-induced anxiety, bewilderment and always feeling like I didn't know what on earth I was doing or supposed to be doing. Stumbling through the legal way to cite and teaching myself from The Bluebook for hours on end was not exactly fun. Then, I wrote a "survey" paper that had an argument. Again, not my best work. I once laughed aloud while writing when thinking about how badly I felt for the poor soul who had to read my paper. I was a goner, sure not to pass. I had already convinced myself that I was just happy to have had the willpower to get through it without giving up. (It's not required to do a journal and it's easy to push off until the next round of Candidacy.)

I really liked my topic, though, and I hope to develop it more in the fall. I chose to write about protecting traditional medicinal knowledge of indigenous people. The issue is that big pharmaceutical companies are going to third world countries and getting patents on things indigenous people have known/been using for hundreds of years. Once the pharm companies get patents, the indigenous people no longer have rights to keep doing their own cultural, every-day-knowledge practices. More than that, though, the pharm companies are making a big profit with no benefits to the indigenous people who told them about the medicinal uses of plants.

As I had such limited time to write the paper and the paper was no more than 12 pages including footnotes, I had to drastically limit my argument. So, I argued that the legal framework for protecting traditional medicinal knowledge is a bad way to try to protect it. Right now, people consider TMK as a form of intellectual property. So international lawsuits over rights are over property rights. I suggested in my paper two alternatives. First, stronger domestic law would avoid some conflicts because there would be state-backing for indigenous people, rather than pitting indigenous people against big 1st world corporations. The second suggestion was that instead of thinking of TMK as property, think of it as some sort of human right or indigenous people's right. This would solve a lot of problems because TMK doesn't have a lot of the characteristics of regular property. It's hard to protect something as property when it doesn't fit into the accepted legal definition of property. Anyway, it was pretty cool to read about different plants and herbs that indigenous people have been using for medicine for hundreds of years. It's kind of the fusion of my interest in indigenous rights, international things, love of knowledge (philosophy!), health and law.

The other big thing this week is that I finished my first grad class toward my masters! I took a 9 hour (2 question) essay exam today and e-mailed it in. Hurrah! It was International Political Theory and I gobbled that stuff right up. I loved it. Hope the exam turns out well. It's amazing how much less stressful exams at grad school are than law school exams. And, I had so much more confidence that I could do well. Law school is such a downer - always feeling like you have no idea what to expect, purposefully unreachable standards ("It's impossible for anyone to get near a perfect score on my exams"), and stupid curved grading. Loving grad school. :)

Oh yeah, AND, I did my first Side Crow in yoga. I've been trying to do it since January!

Onward and upward...

Moral Progress

I'm reading a book right now called "Democratic Individuality." It's the type of title that makes me want to skim over it quickly under the assumption that I don't know - no, no, that I couldn't know - what the elitist, academic lingo means. I make myself think about it and take a stab at what the title means. Maybe I'm wrong, but my guess is that it's about this: how can we be individuals if our entire democratic system is bent on making us all equal (i.e., the same)?

The question of individuality in democracy is tied to morality. Why? First, remember that morality has to do with proper behavior. Is my behavior proper, good, right? But, it's not simply a person's behavior in the abstract. Instead, proper behavior is only known by looking at it in the context of other people. The connection comes, then, because proper behavior, doing good, and being right, being moral is all in reference to other people. Determining morality means looking at the impact of an individual's actions on other people. So, we see that one person of many in a democratic system must be careful in trying to be an individual, because their actions may be immoral (improper, evil, bad, wrong) with respect to the other people in the system.

Still with me? Okay, good. Here's the real question: is there morality relativity or moral realism?

Moral relativity = morals are subjective, changing, and relative to particular cultures, eras, situations, etc.

Moral realism = morals are absolute, fixed and universal. There is one standard that holds for all people, across all time, and all situations.

I'm not saying whether I think there is relativism or realism (because I don't know!), but here's something to think about. Some say that because we can see changing morals, our morals must be relative. We used to think slavery was fine and dandy. Now we (the American people at-large) generally think slavery is a moral wrong. Our morality has changed = evidence that we have no fixed, absolute morality.

BUT, what if morality is like science. Scientific work establishes universal truths. Gravity. F=MA. The quadratic formula. But, science also continuously overturns "universal truths" when new discoveries are made. We don't say there are no scientific universal truths, or that other scientific universal truths are now wrong, just because we realize that one past "truth" was actually a mistake. What if morality is the same way? What if we make discoveries about what is moral. If that's true, our changing morals wouldn't show unfixed, subjective morality. Our changing morals would show that we are making progress in the field of morality. And, just as in science, a new universal truth does not undermine all truths of science, a new moral (e.g. that men and women are equal, that we shouldn't have slavery, that homosexuality is a-okay) does not undermine all truths of morality.

Think about it. Tell me what you think.