Monthly Archives: May 2017

Art

One last post for the weekend on some books, music, and movies I’ve enjoyed this month.

I really haven’t had much time to read in all my travels, but on the plane to Beijing I got through a few of the poetry books that Sam had had me receive on Amazon to bring to her in China. They were all collections of poems by Philip Levine, originally from Detroit and up until recently residing in Fresno, CA. One of his earlier works, What Work Is, was the most moving to me, a depiction of working-class life in beautiful prose verse. Here’s “What Work Is”:

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, ‘No,
we’re not hiring today,’ for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

Just back from travels this week, I final got through Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, which I wrote about two posts earlier. I’ve got a stack of new books on my desk which are all non-fiction, so it’ll be some time before I get back into literature, but I’ve got a great list from Sam I’m excited to explore.

My May playlist consists of Sylvan Esso, Slowdive, Perfume Genius, Mac DeMarco, two singles released from Planetarium, and now one single from The National’s upcoming album.

Sylvan Esso’s What Now has really grown on me and is an excellent sequel to their debut a few years ago. I think the most toxic thing about the music is Amelia Meath’s voice, which has a strangely Southern, strangely street twang that works so well in an aggressively punk sort of way. It activates when she goes into a higher register of her voice; take the intro of “The Glow” where she’s reminiscing about sweet details from childhood, including “Deanna’s so beautiful / Pretending not to care” — right there she gives the end of that verse the perfect amount of kick to swing into a high-energy chorus. Looking up the lyrics just now on Genius, I just discovered that she’s referring to The Microphones’ The Glow Pt. 2 which is just awesome. Other songs I really like: “Song”, “Just Dancing”, “Signal”, and “Rewind”. I guess I would place them in a similar space in my musical landscape as CHVRCHES and Flock of Dimes (who is opening for them in August at the Fox Theater), but they are the most down-to-earth and free-styling of the three. My rating: 4/5

Slowdive was a new find for me (especially given that they’ve been on hiatus for almost as long as I’ve been alive), but the music sounds strangely familiar to me. There is a general similarity to a band I can’t for the life of me think of, but otherwise I hear connections to The Police, The War on Drugs, Pink Floyd, Broken Social Scene, and most of all, The Antlers. It’s the melodious moments when the lead singer’s voice reminds me of Peter Silberman (eg. the slower sections of “Don’t Know Why”) that this music really resonates the most with me. Other songs I like: “Slomo”, “Sugar for the Pill”, and “No Longer Making Time”. 4/5

Now, Perfume Genius has been the most exhilarating release of May and has really elevated their status in my mind since I saw Mike Hadreas as an opener for Belle & Sebastien at the Greek a few years ago. I highly recommend you listen to his interview on Song Exploder to hear directly from Mike how this album was a departure from past sounds. I would describe songs like “Slip Away” and “Wreath” as achieving something of a Yeasayer “I Remember” kind of epic cinematic scope, and it sure has been a long time since I’ve experienced music like this. There are also really elegant tunes like “Valley” and “Every Night”, sprawling gothic landscapes like “Sides” featuring a haunting Weyes Blood, and beautiful ballads like “Alan”. This album is really a cut above the rest in its ambition and intensity, and I suspect you will see this on a bunch of top-10 charts at the end of the year. My rating: 4.5/5

Mac DeMarco, meanwhile, has made the chillest album of the month that is also a complete joy to listen to. Where Real Estate feels like driving fast on a highway, Mac DeMarco’s This Old Dog feels like skating slow through a suburban neighborhood (likely with a pitbull following you). I enjoyed listening him talk about his life on WTF, but really it’s not essential knowledge to appreciate the attention to rich layering and sonic harmony throughout this album. I particularly like the use of synths in songs like “For the First Time”, “Dreams for Yesterday”, and “Watching Him Fade Away” to evoke disco and soul vibes alongside folksy guitar songs like “Baby You’re Out”, “One Another”, and “Still Beating”. The standout song is “A Wolf Who Wears Sheep’s Clothes” which features a really fresh slide effect on the lead guitar, accompanied by harmonica and claves in the background. Overall he’s like a modern stoner reincarnation of the old Cat Stevens. My rating: 4/5

Coming up is a collaboration between Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister called Planetarium. I’ve been quite fascinated by the promise of Sufjan Stevens side projects since loving Sisyphus, and the two songs that have been released so far, “Saturn” and “Mercury”, paint two very different portraits of what this project could overall sound like. The former is heavy Auto-Tune and almost becomes danceable, while the latter almost fits into Carrie & Lowell with a beautiful melody and a sprawling outro. Whichever direction the overall album heads, I am very much optimistic. Meanwhile, The National has unveiled some really sweet modernist graphic design and an intriguing song, “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness.” Overall the track is much more rocky than anything on Trouble Will Find You, which is not necessarily a direction I’m excited about, but nonetheless it sure is nice to hear Matt Berninger’s voice again.

Finally, films. I’ve only watched two films so far in May and they were both this weekend. If you liked Prometheus, which I totally did, then you’ll certainly like Alien: Covenant, which is a satisfying extension of the same scope and rich dynamism of characters/species. I’ve always loved the ambition of a story that introduces three very different forms of life: human, alien, and machine, and crafts a mythology that inexplicably ties the fate of all three. Humans, as before, are simultaneously cursed and blessed with the flaws of faith and love. In this sequel, the arguably best character of Prometheus, Michael Fassbender’s android David, gets a foil in the doppelganger American-accent version, Walter, and Ridley Scott employs some really delightful film magic in a long shot panning back and forth between the two Fassbenders as David teachers Walter how to play a musical instrument. Compared to a crappy film like Passengers which I was forced to watch on the plane back from China, this film seems to pack about tenfold more plot and character into the same space (pun intended). One thing that certainly helps is a cast of characters whose fate actually really matter to the audience. The final plot twist was fairly predictable, but that didn’t stop it from being a guilty pleasure to watch unfold. Turns out the other movie I watched this weekend was also a space film, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. As much as I enjoyed the irreverent humor of the first one, and noted successful things happening in this sequel, I sort of lost interest halfway through and began to wonder whether the magic of Marvel is starting to wear off. I hope that Thor: Ragnarok pulls off a really different type of comedy that has a longer half life for me.

Standard
Journal

A short recount of my two trips this month, to NYC/DC and to China!

New York City and Washington DC

Having been to NYC many times already, I thought that this trip would be mostly in/out for Stanford project work with some of my students, but there ended up being some really magical moments as well. First, this was my first time staying in Brooklyn, for better or for worse, in a brownstone in Bed-Stuy converted into at least 5 separate Airbnb rooms. But it meant that I got to see an area of Brooklyn I’d never seen before. I’d never really even been to Dumbo; the first evening we went to to Juliana’s for some incredible pizza, then walked around the beautiful parks and enjoyed the stunning sunset right below the Brooklyn Bridge… then went straight back for a second dinner at Shake Shack. We were hungry because we had flown right through lunch.

The next day we did an exciting workshop with folks at the Smart Cities NYC Conference in Brooklyn Navy Yards then had wonderful pasta at Forno Rocco’s in downtown Brooklyn, before heading to Manhattan to meet with the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics. That was the end of the formal schedule, so I parted ways with the students and went to catch up with my best friend Dylan, who was busy studying for his Law School finals but took the time to go and grab a bite of pasta. I then headed back to Brooklyn to catch up with my friend Jason who’s working on a really important project called PennyPass.

The third day brought further uptown in Manhattan, where we walked around the UN Headquarters for a bit and then presented to a group at the United Nations Foundation. I then got to head to Wall Street and check out the BIG office, then briefly catch up with Stanford alum Stefan who’s now at NYCDOT. Then I was off to JFK, but decided to try a different route than usual on a bus through local neighborhoods that honestly are the real NYC. JetBlue ended up being delayed a few hours and I got to my go-to hostel in DC around 3:30am.

The next morning it was pouring rain but I met up with two new students and colleagues from SDSN, NYC, and Baltimore for a fascinating meeting in the State Department in which we had to leave all of our laptops and devices in old-fashioned lockers outside the room that were clearly made long before such devices were invented. It was a bit exhilarating to feel so close to the inner workings of an administration where inner workings are now under such scrutiny. I was half expecting to go into this “high-security” room and see a secret door into Russia or something.

Anyway, we then headed to another meeting with a big foundation and then visited the Cannon House where we shared our work with staff members of Rep Eshoo and Rep Lofgren from the South Bay. It turns out that the halls of these Congress buildings are some of the most passive aggressive places in the world.

That was it for the day, but I shortly thereafter got a text from JetBlue telling us that our flights back to NYC were canceled, so after some scrambling online decided that the best Plan B was to take a bus out of Union Station. Unfortunately, that bus ended up breaking down somewhere in Jersey, so we then had to wait for another bus, and the bus driver couldn’t quite figure out how to park in Penn Station, so by the time we got back to our Bed-Stuy Airbnb it was something like 2am.

The next day was a Saturday, and after a refreshing revisit to the High Line (where the Hudson Yards are really starting to shape up), a brief check-in with some planners from SF who were in town for the National APA Conference, and a tour of the Bloomberg Foundation office courtesy of Scott, I parted with the students for a free afternoon. My close friend Ivan and I treated ourselves to Derren Brown’s first live performance in the States, called Secret at the Atlantic Theater Company. If you haven’t seen anything from Derren Brown, just spend about 20 minutes on YouTube (here’s a perfectly good one to start with), but keep an extra 20 hours ready. Then, suffice it to say that his live show was everything you couldn’t possibly imagine and more, and that if you’re in NYC anytime soon, GO SEE IT. That’s all I’m allowed to say, given that the show’s contents are a secret.

Later I caught up with my friend Alison whose wedding I attended last August (turns out her husband has been living in the room next to Dylan’s for some time, unbeknownst to him, and she just happened to be in town the same time as me), then reconnected with my Stanford students for a night of stale improv and scrumptious Korean food. The next morning we had brunch in Bed-Stuy, I did one last event speaking on a panel at the APA Conference, then we headed off to Newark. All in all it was a great chance to be back in my definitive favorite city in the world and to see some of my favorite people.

Beijing and Chengdu, China

After just two days back in the Bay Area, I headed off for a second trip to China, having been invited by partners at Sichuan University to come engage with a group of students who are participating in a similar Sustainable Urban Systems Program. I had asked for a 12-hour layover in Beijing on the way in so I could catch up with one of my close friends Sam, who lives downtown in the financial sector. My neck and upper back were killing me on the whole plane ride over, probably built up knots from all the traveling the previous week. But great food and drinks and conversation made for a relaxing night in Beijing with a fellow lover of art and life.

The next morning I headed back to the airport for a short leg to Chengdu, where I made my way to Sichuan University campus where I had been two years ago with my dad. I joined a few of the teachers for lunch where I was quickly re-acquainted with the incredible kick of Sichuan peppers in hotpot. Then one teacher dropped me off at 太古里, the site of an old Buddhist temple which has since had a major luxury commercial development with some really high-quality architecture. One of the coolest stores there was a massive bookstore in which I bought my new sci-fi, The Three Body Problem, as well as All the Light We Cannot See, in Chinese to give as gifts.

The next day I met with most of the students for a field trip to “Crazy Ranch” (疯狂农庄) where an old Taiwanese woman has been perfecting self-sufficient agriculture. Having rarely been on farms in my life, it was great to see lots of design details like tire tubes being used as cheap drip irrigation, yellow sheets which caught flies, truly raised planter beds to prevent certain diseases, and an extensive water purification channel system. After a long day at the farm, I finally got to address that back pain with a good old Chinese massage.

One of the most interesting new things in China has been a wave of bikeshare companies that rely on WeChat for checking in and out of the bikes, so that they can be parked pretty much anywhere in the city. One company, Mobike, has an electronic locking mechanism, while the competitor, Ofo, has an analog combination lock. These really have become ubiquitous as they’re literally everywhere in the city, and it was stunning to see just how scalable free market technologies can be in a place like China. Unfortunately, I don’t think this works in practice in the States because of accessibility laws (these are literally left anywhere, including right in the middle of sidewalks).

On my last two days, I gave lectures at Sichuan University to students, ate more delicious food, and got to visit a few more iconic places in downtown Chengdu which I had missed the last time, including the resting place of 刘备, one of the emperors from the Three Kingdoms from Chinese history (my only knowledge coming from an old TV show I watched as a kid). On the last evening I biked with some teachers to an old industrial part of town which had been revitalized into a series of hipster art studios, cafes, and sports facilities, and we enjoyed some German beer on top of a shipping container overlooking a river as we swatted away mosquitoes and talked about the state of education in China and the U.S. It never ceases to amaze me how precious and interconnected life can be all around this great big planet.

Standard
Ideas

It’s Sunday, May 21st and I’m just about caught up on my personal and professional life after two trips out of town this month. I want to write about those trips, and I want to write about the music and art that accompanied me on those trips, but first a few reflections.

I blog because I am an introspective searching for answers, and hoping that others are searching for the same. I believe that reading (and therefore writing), more than any other medium, has the potential to change minds (and therefore change lives). If, in addition to the direct work I do everyday on education and urban problem solving, I can invest a little bit of time each week into synthesizing and documenting my ideas in written form, I truly believe that it makes me a smarter and more impactful person, and provides some secondary value to some group of readers. Someday I would like to be the kind of person some may consider to have ‘thought leadership’ or to be a ‘public intellectual’; the role model that comes to mind is Sam Harris, who has inspired me on my recent journey of intellectual honesty. I am curious, to the anonymous readers out there (if any), whether there are topics that would interest you more than the random assortment I usually cover — whether I could organize something similar to an ‘AMA: Ask Me Anything’ anytime soon that would be valuable to anyone. For what it’s worth, I have an anonymous form in the menu of this website called “Feedback” which can serve that exact purpose, and I’d be more than happy to tackle questions on any topic I receive through that form in upcoming posts.

As I mentioned, I have been on a journey of intellectual honesty, vaguely inspired by deep anxieties about the state of our politics and culture. To be more specific: there are myriad technical and ethical issues within the various systems of our society I could individually focus on and work on, and ultimately would like to in the course of my professional career, but the most fundamental system that stitches them all together is the system of reason. If we lose the sanctity of rational and evidence-based decision-making in our social and political discourse, we lose the ability to be sure of anything. That’s why I think the greatest harm Trump has done so far is an irreversible damaging of trust, trust in our institutions that takes decades and centuries to build up but can wither and collapse in a matter of days.

Speaking of Trump, I have been holding out on the possibility for impeachment or resignation in fear of impeachment since the very beginning, and now that things have started to heat up around the Comey, Flynn, etc. drama, I would like to take a bold step towards thinking in public and state that I now feel more than 50% certain that Trump will NOT last as President until November 2020. That being said, that wouldn’t necessarily bring about satisfaction since we’d get President Pence, but at least we would have rescued ourselves from a more basic type of shame.

Moving from the political to the personal, my intellectual honesty project is first and foremost a project to examine and question my own ethical reasoning. I started thinking mostly about religion and faith, and planning to document a comprehensive and persuasive ‘coming out’ as atheist, but for various reasons have not been able or willing to give that project due justice. Meanwhile, as you know, I have been attempting to transition my diet towards vegetarianism for both environmental and ethical reasons, and this weekend I feel like I’ve made a moral breakthrough while reading Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation to want to commit fully to the real goal of veganism, and would like to briefly explain why and how.

I already had a strong sense of why I care about food from an ecological sustainability perspective, given the excessive impacts of a meat-based diet on land, greenhouse gases, and water. That alone should be enough of a reason for any intellectually honest believer in climate change and the environment to actively try to eliminate beef from his/her diet. I’ve also been attempting to explicitly change my diet out of concern for the suffering of animals, as an intellectually honest ‘expanding of the circle’, to use Singer’s language, from our inherently selfish and tribal nature to a concern for all humans to, inevitably, a concern for all organisms capable of suffering. The book did not discuss one of Harris’s interesting expansions on the subject, in which he considers that the capacity for pain may be proportional to some measure of the brain’s complexity, so that the suffering of mammals, birds, fish, etc. can be meaningfully distinguished. But it made those differences almost not matter, where I have the choice to remove meat from my diet entirely. And more importantly, Animal Liberation made it painfully obvious to me that if I truly care about animal suffering, then being content with vegetarianism as the end goal is complete hypocrisy, since standard eggs are produced through exactly the same cruel factory farm conditions as poultry meat (i.e. systematic killing of male baby chicks, debeaking), and dairy products carry even greater harm through the systematic suffering of mother cows losing their children and calves heading for the veal industry. I could certainly have conceived of these ethical problems with greater thought, despite its perfect obfuscation by the capitalistic drug that is ignorance, and so I consider myself fully guilty of intellectual dishonesty on this issue.

So, having fared well in this transition away from an omnivorous lifestyle in the first half of 2016, I will now try actively to completely boycott animal products. The book also reminded me of the obvious point that this position must accompanied by efforts to persuade others to do the same, or else it loses its sustaining impact. And so expect me to write pretty regularly about my experience here, with best practices to impart, and always open to learn more myself. I’ve already tried to enforce vegetarianism at scale where I can, like in giving all my Stanford-related food events vegetarian menus. I’d like to do a mid-year progress report on what my dietary transition has meant in quantifiable results. Very recently, I discovered Rainbow Grocery which is about a 15 minute walk from my house, and it has an incredible selection of local, organic, and ethically conscious food that will make this diet much more easy and enjoyable (especially the possibility of truly ethical eggs; I’ll need to do more research on this but ‘pasture-raised’ seems to be a serious label, or else I was tricked into paying $10 for a dozen eggs). Today I also bought some multivitamins, including B-12, having read that these are some nutritional deficiencies to watch out for.

As we descend deeper into this brave new world, I invite you all to consider just how equipped your tools of reasoning are. They may be our only sources of light in the coming darkness.

Standard