Book piracy in Perú: a talk by Daniel Alarcón.

via zunguzungu, I came across this absolutely fascinating talk on UCTV (the University of California's ten-year old educational television channel--and a rich resource!) by novelist Daniel Alarcón on book piracy in Perú. As he describes it, it is one manifestation of the much larger phenomenon of piracy of all kinds of media and documents. What is significant is that he is describing a thriving business in print piracy, not electronic piracy. Without an understanding of this vigorous economic black market in printed books, those making international laws about internet sharing, copyright, file-sharing, and piracy are only seeing a very small part of the problem of how artists can survive as artists. He raises many important points about who is buying, who is selling, who is profiting, and why this should be especially problematic in Perú.

A print version of this talk, "Life Among the Pirates" was published in Granta earlier this year. I highly recommend either viewing the video or reading the article. Here is UCTV's description. You can download the talk under a Creative Commons license.

"Daniel Alarcón is the Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning monthly magazine published in his native Lima, Peru, and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Latin America Studies at UC Berkeley. In 2007, the journal Granta named Alarcón one of the Best Young American Novelists. Series: Story Hour in the Library [5/2010] [Humanities] [Show ID: 18506]"

The jaded mentor

This one is making the rounds of the higher ed blogs and even sites like mefi. I should note that none of this is new. When I started grad school in Comp Lit in 1980, there were no jobs. I don't see that the situation has actually changed that much, just shifted.

So you want to get a PhD in the Humanities?



But don't despair! the "practical" professions have their own versions.
So you want to be a lawyer?

How Twitter helps me filter and connect

I like this picture of the Ebro River rising in Zaragoza this winter, near the Basílica del Pilar.
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There is so much information to manage: what's the best way to do it? as usual, the answer is a question of individual needs and style. I found that Facebook overloaded me with information updates I didn't want, so I deleted my account, but other friends are delighted with how it helps them keep in touch with people.

For following blogs or news outlets, I have experimented with using RSS feeds in a number of ways: as part of the My Blogs Lists over on the right of this sight, on my iGoogle page, through Bloglines, on my browser toolbar. But I often feel as if I'm drowning in numbers if I look at a feed agregator; it triggers the somewhat obsessive-compulsive reader in me in a way that feels unpleasant.

I am finding that Twitter is working well for me as a kind of feed + filter, and so has enhanced my ability to pick up on stories that interest me. I'm following some really funny and generous people, who post tweets with links to stories, songs, images, or websites that entertain or teach me something new. I'm also trying to limit the number of tweeters I'm following so I'm not overdoing it. A tweet can be an end in itself, but also a door opening up on a blog post or a news story that leads me in unexpected and rewarding directions.

Here's a sampling of what I found today through tweets from people I'm following. I'm leaving out the personal greetings, jokes and academic musings, which deserve a separate post. I could have found some of these through an RSS feed to each of the relevant blogs, but the Twitter feed allows me to respond directly as well as leave comments on the news stories (which I do) or the posts.

via @VisitLakeStreet, a neighborhood news feed, I discovered the brand new "Living Green Twin Cities" website went live this week-looks great, and connects me to local events and writers about sustainability.

via @blogdiva and @nezalicious (aka Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen and Nezua at The Unapologetic Mexican) Nancy Pelosi decides to use her powers for good, as reported in the SF Chronicle: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined hundreds of families Saturday evening at a church in San Francisco's Mission District demanding an end to the immigration raids and deportations that separate parents from children across the United States." As usual, I'll be following the extended stories on immigration politics at Nezua's site The Unapologetic Mexican. boohoo, blogdiva's server is down, but I'll keep looking for her tweets.

via @kottkedotorg and @sashafrerejones, my favorite mashup of the week: kutiman has taken tracks from YouTube videos and created some Thru-You jukebox that is awesome, whether you watch it or just listen to it in the backround, as I'm doing now.

by way of @torresburiel in Zaragoza, I found a post on International Women's day, which is today, March 8, on a blog called marilink: "ninguna lista de chicas geek". Although he highlighted the part of her post that seemed to suggest that we don't need special days (she says she reads people for the quality of what they say, not because of gender), she also points out why we still need to think about women's place in the world and why we still need an International Women's Day. A link at her post (to an article posted at the Women's Media Center) pointed out that women are now half of all bloggers, but that the media still doesn't make this visible.

@UMN News links to a profile of a colleague in Anthropology whose book on the ethnography of Wall Street trades has just been published. I've heard her talk about her research, and I'm going to buy her book, because it's the inside scoop on the culture of the traders that has been a major contributing factor to this iteration of the boom/bust cycle. I have noticed that I get much more news about the U through my Twitter account than through other sources, and I work there. I went to the U's Media pages and discovered that they do not have a link or widget allowing readers to know they are using Twitter, so I wrote and suggested that they add that feature. Let's see if they respond.

@jojeda --Julio Ojeda-Zapata is a reporter for the Pioneer Press who covers all kinds of tech stuff at YourTechWeblog. He has a round-up of the PiPress coverage of Amazon's new ebook reader Kindle. I was interested in checking out this new device, an he does an excellent pro/con story. Then I started following his links to other bloggers and got pleasantly distracted. I love serendipity!

Update: edited for spelling because I'm sloppy.

When my daughter goes to college, what will she find?

Professor Zero dixit:
"Real conditions are that we are either hot members of the Academic Industrial Complex with hobbies of our choice, or tutors to the privileged classes with hobbies of our college’s choice, or activists in popular education with hobbies resembling the day jobs of hot members of the Academic Industrial Complex."
I will be thinking about this as I grade, as I write my paper for the MLA, and as I prepare my classes for spring, knowing that only 1/10 of the searches in our college can go forward, leaving many positions unfilled, departments that are already understaffed falling farther behind. In the short and long term, the politics of disinvestment in higher education promoted by our current governor and legislature (because they can't override his veto) have made the conditions of work at my institution--for staff, students and faculty--more difficult. Paying for college at our state's land-grant university without leaving with at least $25,000 in debt, has become an unreachable goal for many. Our fiscal realities are completely and utterly at odds with the professed goals of our administration.
In other words, we can either think big and meet the challenges, or we can collectively continue to advance blindly as if this were still the 20th century.