PRIZE AMERICANA

 

Americana: The Institute for the Study of American Popular Culture invites you to submit poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction/memoir for PRIZE AMERICANA. We believe that creative writers create our future popular culture and must be supported as they express the hopes, dreams, struggles, and challenges of their age. Winners will receive publication by Press Americana. We are open to all styles and genres. We would like to congratulate Jacqueline K. Powers for her manuscript The Mysteries of Fishing and Flight which won Prize Americana for Poetry 2011. We would also like to congratulate Katherine L. Holmes for her manuscript Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories which won Prize Americana for Fiction 2011   PRIZE AMERICANA FOR POETRY 2012 DEADLINE 5 JANUARY 2012 Submit 50-100 page manuscript to editor@americanpopularculture.com. The processing fee of $25 may be paid electronically through Paypal to editor@americanpopularculture.com or checks/money orders may be mailed to Americana, 7095-1240 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California 90028.   PRIZE AMERICANA FOR PROSE 2012 (FICTION OR NONFICTION/MEMOIR) DEADLINE 5 JUNE 2012 Submit 130-200 page manuscript to editor@americanpopularculture.com. The processing fee of $25 may be paid electronically through Paypal to editor@americanpopularculture.com or checks/money orders may be mailed to Americana, 7095-1240 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California 90028. RULES Submission to Prize Americana implies acceptance of the following rules:   1) Submissions will be judged by select members of the Advisory Board and Editors of PRESS AMERICANA and REVIEW AMERICANA. All decisions will be considered final and will not be subject to dispute.   2) We subscribe to the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Contest Code of Ethics. As such, all submissions are reviewed blindly.   3) Winners of Prize Americana for Poetry will be published by The Poetry Press, the poetry imprint of Press Americana. They will receive the same contract as any other writer publishing through the press and will work with an editor for the press.   4) Winners of Prize Americana for Prose will be published by Hollywood Books International, the fiction/creative nonfiction imprint of Press Americana. They will receive the same contract as any other writer publishing through the press and will work with an editor for the press.   5) Press Americana publishes in paperback only. Authors may make the decision to distribute in Ebook formats as well.   6) American citizenship is not a requirement; the only requirement is that the work hold some appeal for an American readership and bear some relationship with American culture. 7) Manuscripts must be previously unpublished. Individual stories or poems may have been published in literary reviews etc., but the work as a whole should be available for publication. 8) All questions may be emailed to the Executive Director, Dr. Leslie Kreiner Wilson, editor@americanpopularculture.com.   PREVIOUS PRIZE AMERICANA WINNERS POETRY Jacqueline K. Powers, The Mysteries of FIshing and Flight, 2011 Alexandria Ashford, Danke Schoen, 2010 PROSE Katherine L. Holmes, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories, 2011 Alan Davis, So Bravely Vegetative, 2010   Visit Press Americana here Visit Review Americana here

Two Review Poetry Contest 2011
 

Judge: John Guzlowski

John Guzlowski is the son of parents who met in a slave labor camp in Nazi Germany. He was born Zbigniew Guzlowski in a Displaced Persons camp in Vienenburg, Germany, in 1948, and changed his name when he was naturalized as an American citizen. He came to the United States in 1951 with his parents and sister, settling first in New York State and then in Chicago’s old Polish Downtown. Guzlowski holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and he is Professor Emeritus at Eastern Illinois University, where he taught contemporary American literature and poetry writing. He is the author of Lightning and Ashes (Steel Toe Books) and Third Winter of War: Buchenwald (Finishing Line Press), and a chapbook titled Language of Mules. Guzlowski’s poetry and essays have appeared widely around the world in publications like Margie, Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, Chattahoochee Review, Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Studies in Jewish American Literature, and Polish Review. His poem “What My Father Believed” was read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Guzlowski lives in Virginia, where he maintains the blog Lightning & Ashes.

 

---

Prizes
$100, $50, $25 plus publication. All submissions considered for publication in Two Review 2012.

Guidelines
Pay $10.00 contest fee below, then submit up to five (5) unpublished poems with a brief bio via email to tworeview@gmail.com.

Deadline
EXTENDED TO DECEMBER 31, 2011.
 

Two Review 2010 Poetry Contest Fee

Please pay your contest fee securely and reference your transaction number in your submission.

Two Review 2010 Poetry Contest Fee

Please pay your contest fee securely and reference your transaction number in your submission.

 

See below for a printable PDF of the 2011 Two Review Poetry Contest Announcement.

two_review_poetry_contest_2011.pdf

Download File

26 December 2011

Alice Diop:

"It is up to us to work on

our own complexes"

Interview with Alice Diop by Olivier Barlet about her film La Mort de Danton (Danton's Death)* in Africultures. Translated from French to English by Beti Ellerson

 

Born in France into a Senegalese family, Alice Diop studied the relationship between cinema and society before venturing into documentary filmmaking: La Tour du monde (The World’s Tower), a portrait of immigrant families, offers a different view of a neighborhood north of Paris where she grew up; Clichy pour l'exemple (Clichy as example) seeks to find the reasons for the rage that surfaced in the housing projects in 2005; Les Sénégalaises et la Sénégauloise (Senegalese women and the Sene-Gallic-ese woman) deals with the women in her Dakarois family; and the current film shows both the courageous journey and the doubts of Steve, a tall black man of a Seine St. Denis housing project, after three years of acting classes in Paris.

 

"Danton's Death" has been selected in many festivals and has won awards, notably the prix des bibliothèques (the library prize) at the prestigious Cinéma du reel. What do you attribute to its success?

 

In all modesty, I think it’s a bit of an overstatement to speak of success. But yes, I was delighted about the reception of the film, especially the award at the Cinéma du reel, which came very soon after the editing was completed. I think that many people identify with Steve’s journey, his thirst for independence, his desire to make a life for himself and to dare to imagine a possibility beyond the destiny assigned to him. I remember an older woman who came to me after a screening and said with tears in her eyes "Steve is me". I was extremely touched. She was white, she was from Picardy and she recognized in him her own complex of illegitimacy. I am very happy that this film can speak to everyone. That so many people could relate to Steve’s character was very important to me. I think this film can extend beyond the subject of discrimination against black actors in France and prejudices that affect young people from housing projects.

 

How did you meet Steve Tientcheu?

 

We grew up in the same housing project, the 3000, in Aulnay-sous-Bois, but then I left the neighborhood and only saw him again later at a wedding. I thought that he had conformed to what I imagined one would become growing up in the housing projects, but he said he was taking acting lessons at the Cours Simon. I was shocked: I realized that I was projecting the same prejudices on him that I was condemning in others! I asked him if I could attend a rehearsal, and while there I perceived a great violence in the place that was accorded him, the manner in which others viewed him. That is when I suggested to him to make a film.

 

"The Death of Danton" carries this title because you give Steve the opportunity to interpret, alone and in the street, the role that he dreams of but that he is denied on the stage because he is Black. Was this the main theme of the film?

 

It was I who asked Steve to interpret this scene, I pushed him to interpret the role of Danton. It was a way of saying "do not expect others to legitimise what you want to be."

 

As I said earlier, I think this film deals with more than questions about the place given to black actors in France. For me the reality is actually indicative of something much larger. The subject of my film is rather about how to escape from the confinement of the gaze of the Other, how to invent one’s own life and become the person of one’s choice, despite what others project on us, despite the place and role they assign to us. Of course with someone like Steve, a kind of a walking caricature of all the clichés that people can have about the "youth of housing projects", this question takes on a specific social and political dimension.

 

In the Cours Simon, Steve is alone because he elicits fear. Is it related to his living in a housing project or is it something else based on his personal characteristics? Could it be what the other students project onto him?

 

This film is the story of an exchange that did not happen. Most of the people in the Cours Simon have not been able to go beyond the preconceived image they had of him, because he comes from Department 93, because he is very physically imposing. In spite of himself, Steve embodies all the imagery that people have of the “scum of the housing projects”. They locked him into that role. As a defense mechanism, he in turn isolates himself. I think it is a pity because he made the effort to take the RER [Parisian inter-regional transportation] in order to get away from the confinement of the projects where he has stagnated for years, in an attempt to realize his dream of becoming an actor.

 

Young people like Steve are often held responsible for their social situation. When I started this film, the discourse on meritocracy was dominant. The famous guilt-inducing injunction "if we want to, we can!" was very popular. With this character, I had the opportunity to show it is not enough to want, one must also feel accepted! This is the case in a drama school but unfortunately also in many other places in French society, which is so compartmentalized.

 

Steve accepts the roles that he is given to play, though very stereotypical: the slave, the driver, the gangster, the activist. This is the range of roles dedicated to black men. What triggered his awareness and his decision to challenge it?

 

It happened during the third year. Just after he asked to play Danton and was denied, given the reason that Danton was not black. During the first two years he wanted more than anything to learn the trade. He was not aware that he was playing all the stereotypes of the black in the white imagination. I did not want to tell him, to influence his views on this experience, and since I had the opportunity to film throughout his three-year training, I hoped that he himself would become aware before the end of his apprenticeship.

 

Do you as a woman filmmaker also face this symbolic violence of prejudice?

 

Yes in some ways, though more muted I'd say, however not necessarily mal-intentioned. I have long felt that as a black filmmaker I am expected to only be interested in Africa or the housing projects. I refused to participate in a program where I was asked to discuss African cinema today. I did not feel that it was my legitimate place to talk about it. I have Senegalese origins, I go to Senegal as often as I can, but I live and work in France. I really feel strongly about not being trapped in any label. But for young filmmakers of immigrant origins like me it is sometimes difficult.

 

I claim the right to own any subject. If I have to talk about the housing projects in a film, it is not because I was born there but because I am connected to a story that I feel needs to be filmed. For me “Danton's Death” is not just a film about a black guy from the housing projects. What interested me is the idealistic aspect of this character.

 

You avoid the sociology of the housing projects, which is so prevalent on TV: Steve is rarely shown in the context of the environment in which he lives. Why this choice?

 

It really was a choice during the editing. I shot some scenes of him in his housing project with his friends. But during the editing we decided very quickly not to include them. They would not have provided the opportunity to go beyond the stereotypes and preconceived images of the housing projects. Steve’s friends are great; they welcomed me kindly and gave me the confidence to film them in their private lives. It was because of this trust that we decided with the editor Amrita David, not to include them. I did not have enough footage of them to really develop their characters. So to show them hanging out along the rail smoking joints did not interest us. We were not there to reinforce stereotypes but rather to dispel them!

 

Even so, Steve does not make any great pronouncements: he takes the abuse in silence and swallows his rage. Is this his personality or was it an editing choice?

 

During the editing we tried to translate the slow emergence of consciousness but also the difficulty he had in speaking to his drama teacher. It is not easy when you lack confidence and you feel socially illegitimate to confront "the oppressor", even though here it is more a kind of cultural and social domination.

 

The drama teacher is rather well intentioned but still a victim of his narrow-mindedness: do you see this as typical of our society?

 

I am sure that Steve’s teacher was not intentionally unkind to him. I just think he lacked a bit of imagination. To say that a black actor cannot play Danton because he is black, in my opinion is to deny the work that Peter Brook has been able to do or what Ariane Mnouchkine has brilliantly done. What happened to Steve in the Cours Simon is in fact a metaphor for what is happening everywhere in France, where discrimination against visible minorities is striking. Always that gaze! That gaze that imprisons, that it ascribes to a place, to a status, to a neighbourhood, to a profession!

 

The shooting lasted almost throughout Steve’s three years of training to the final play. How did you go about choosing the best moments?

 

We chose the strongest moments of his training. We tried to reflect both the emergence of his awareness, but also the effect that this symbolic violence had on him. He was very bitter in our first interview, sinking slowly into a depression, bent under the weight of all the oppression he endured. This is what happened in reality so we retained it in the film.

 

The film resonates as a call to cross social barriers and in doing so not be concerned with the gaze of others. Is this really possible or will Steve be an exception?

 

To put in context Steve’s outburst at the end of the film as he shouts in the street, "freedom, we do not claim it, we take it", I draw from this adage to assert that I no longer ask others to recognize me as a filmmaker, I have finally accepted myself as a filmmaker. It is up to us to work on our own complexes and allow ourselves the right to feel legitimate. I think we need to go beyond the posture of victim. Though I am not denying the difficulties, the many barriers to overcome for those who are not part of the dominant majority, it is necessary for us to do this work. This is the only way to combat prejudice: keep your head high. I think it could also help guard against suffering too much, because that can make you crazy!

 

Was Steve able to find roles after he completed his training?

 

Yes, he was spotted by Canal+ to play in the 2nd season of the series Braquo. Well, he plays a mobster, but I think he enjoyed it. Do not forget that his favorite actors are De Niro, Pacino, Gabin, Ventura—gangsters of great renown! But hey, Al Pacino also gets to play Tony Montana and Richard III. I hope this is the case for Steve. He has the talent, indeed!

 

*George Jacques Danton a leading figure of the French revolution and a great orator with an athletic build, died at the guillotine. His last words: "Do not forget to show my head to the people, it is well worth seeing".

 

Image source: Sudplanete.net


LIRE L'ARTICLE EN ENTIER EN FRANÇAIS

New Data Confirms

Processed Foods Are As

Addictive As Most Drugs

by Shane Roberts Dec 26, 2011

Another day, another story detailing the serious health risks of processed foods. 2011 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year that processed food became public health enemy number one. But with a struggling economy, stagnant wages becoming no wages, and food and beverage lobbyist attaining more power, Twinkie’s and Hawaiian Punch will stay in many American’s cupboards for the foreseeable future.

According to a recently released data, processed foods aren’t just bad for your abs and legs, but their addictive properties cause your brain to fall to pieces, much like a drug addict. Lab studies have found sugary drinks and fatty foods can produce addictive behavior in animals. Brain scans of obese people and compulsive eaters, meanwhile, reveal disturbances in brain reward circuits similar to those experienced by drug abusers.

“The data is so overwhelming the field has to accept it,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “We are finding tremendous overlap between drugs in the brain and food in the brain.”

But let’s not go overboard. As with cigarette regulations in the 1990’s, antagonists will use and manipulate data for their causes, exaggerating the claims without providing context. For example, in order to increase profits, cigarette companies began lacing their products with highly addictive chemicals that had perverse effects on habitual consumers, which led to devastating health consequences. We are seeing the same behavior in food and beverage companies presently.

We also have to respect the consumers right to choose, whether it’s healthy or not. If we don’t, we’ll start legislating morality, which ultimately means a few people will make decisions for the majority. Hence we’ll have another endless, counterproductive war with same pretext as the wars on drugs, terrorism, and anything else that offends our sensibilities.

Business Weekly claims the cost of obesity related illnesses are reaching all-time highs relatively speaking:

The cost to society is enormous. A 2009 study of 900,000 people, published in The Lancet, found that moderate obesity reduces life expectancy by two to four years, while severe obesity shortens life expectancy by as much as 10 years. Obesity has been shown to boost the risk of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The costs of treating illness associated with obesity were estimated at $147 billion in 2008, according to a 2009 study in Health Affairs.

Sugars and fats, of course, have always been present in the human diet and our bodies are programmed to crave them. What has changed is modern processing that creates food with concentrated levels of sugars, unhealthy fats and refined flour, without redeeming levels of fiber or nutrients, obesity experts said. Consumption of large quantities of those processed foods may be changing the way the brain is wired.

Even though there are examples of healthy “obese” people, unfortunately many are not. Painting a broad stroke of obesity with the Body Mass Index gives people false negatives that hurt the perception of healthy larger people more than it motivates unhealthy people to lose weight. Let’s all remember that most muscular people have high BMIs, so obesity is not as big a problem as processed foods and their addictive properites.

6 Responses

1. Tonja says:

   December 26, 2011 at 2:58 pm

   I trust you, Frugivore, but where is this data from?

   Reply
   • Shane Roberts says:

     December 26, 2011 at 3:18 pm

     @Tonja: Hi Tonja,

     Thanks for reading this article,

     Here is the hyperlink to specific data that links refined, processed sugar — the kind that you’ll find in processed food — and drug reward processes.

     http://www.foodaddictionsummit.org/docs/Lenoir_Serre_Article.pdf

     Reply
2. Len says:

   December 26, 2011 at 6:33 pm

   The overabundance and availability of processed food bothers me so much. It is addictive and although I do my best to avoid it, my grocery cart always ends up with something processed. They say stick to the edges of the store to avoid processed food, but when 80-90 percent of the grocery store is filled with boxes, bottles, bags, and cans of food, how is the average person supposed to avoid it all?

   Reply
3. Ginelle says:

   December 26, 2011 at 7:35 pm

   The evidence is around us. Kids and adults are look sick not fat but sick. My grandmother who eats out of garden looks younger than most of my peers, and I’m not even putting a lot on this statement.

Interview with Philip Emeagwali
Part 1: Early Life of Philip Emeagwali - Supercomputers
Philip Emeagwali
Interview By Mary Bellis Nigerian born Dr. Philip Emeagwali first entered the limelight in 1989 when he won the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize for his work with massively parallel computers. He programmed the Connection Machine to compute a world record 3.1 billion calculations per second using 65,536 processors to simulate oil reservoirs. With over 41 inventions submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Philip Emeagwali is making big waves in the supercomputer industry, amazing achievements only surpassed by an even more amazing life. About Nigeria, how do you envision your beginning affecting your end? Philip Emeagwali - Nigeria is a West African nation of over 100 million energetic people. It is endowed with lots of natural resources but lacks human resources. It was recently ranked by the World Bank as the 13th poorest nation in the world. Due to financial reasons, I dropped out of school after eight years of formal schooling. During 1967-70 period, my family was homeless. Sometimes, we slept in refugee camps, abandoned school buildings and bombed houses. The hardship of living in a refugee camp made me psychologically strong. It is called learning from the school of hard knocks. It made me street smart. It equipped me with a greater sense of determination and vision. Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger. Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger. The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future. Family photo taken with my cousin Charles (third from right) with me standing on the right (December 1962 at Uromi, Nigeria). I dropped out of school four and half years later.       You speak about the influence nature's own creativity has had upon your science theories, how did this begin? Philip Emeagwali - I have expertise in five different fields which helps me to easily understand the analogy between my scientific problems and those occurring in nature. First, I identify an analogous problem in nature and borrow from it. It is smarter to borrow from nature than to reinvent the wheels. Your education during your teenage years was outside of the school system, can you talk about that experience? Philip Emeagwali - It was the toughest experience of my life. I dropped out of high school four times between the ages of 12 to 17. When I enrolled in college at age 19, I had a total of eight years of formal classroom education. As a result, I was not comfortable with formal lectures and receiving regular homework assignments. I preferred to study those subjects that were of interest to me. I learned by reading the classic but out-of-date works of Galileo, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein. Since there were no formally trained scientists in my hometown, the famous commercial city of Onitsha, I gained a word-of-mouth reputation as an expert in mathematics, physics and astronomy and students came to consult me in these subjects. What brought about you leaving Africa? Philip Emeagwali - I wanted to become a mathematician, physicist or astronomer. I could not study these subjects at the cutting-edge level in Africa. During the week that I arrived in the United States, I saw an airport, used a telephone, used a library, talked with a scientist, and was shown a computer for the first time in my life. Today, I have access to a $55 million super computer while many African scientists do not have access to a personal computer. The greater opportunity enabled me to make important discoveries and inventions.

Part 2: Winning the Gorden Bell Prize for Supercomputers
	Super Computer - 65536-processor Connection Machine
	In 1989, you won the coveted Gordon Bell Prize for your work with massively parallel computers. You programmed the Connection Machine to compute a world record 3.1 billion calculations per second using 65,536 processors to simulate oil reservoirs. This was done over the Internet. I was wondering how you choose or found the 65,536 computers to help you? Philip Emeagwali - The 65,536 processors were inside the Connection Machine. I accessed the Connection Machine over the Internet. The Connection Machines owned by the United States government laboratories were made available to me because they were considered impossible to program and there was no great demand for them at that time. In fact, the national laboratories that purchased them were embarrassed because their scientists could not program them and they were hardly being used. The labs were happy that I was brave enough to attempt to program it and the $5 million computer was left entirely to my use. I was their human guinea pig. Can you describe the Connection Machine and explain how it all worked? Philip Emeagwali - The Connection Machine was the most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is a complex supercomputer and it will take forever to completely describe how it works. A 32-node cube in five-dimensional universe.               Briefly, to program it requires an absolute understanding of how all 65,536 processors are interconnected. The processing nodes are configured as a cube in a 12-dimensional universe, although we only use it to solve problems arising from our three-dimensional universe. To perform the world's fastest computation, I divided and evenly distributed the calculations among the 65,536 processors and then squeezed the most  performance from the each processor. It took me 1057 pages to describe the hundreds of mathematical equations, algorithms and programming techniques that I invented and used. The gory details will be of interest to only mathematicians and super computer nerds. However, for your amusement, they include equations such as:                       That was 1989 and what you did was considered at that time to be one of the 20 national grand challenges in science and engineering: petroleum reservoir simulation. What is the grand challenge for you today? Philip Emeagwali - The greatest grand challenge for any scientist is discovering how to prevent the spread of HIV and finding the cure or an effective vaccine for AIDS. Eighty percent of Americans with HIV do not know they are infected. One out of every 100 American men is HIV positive. The rate of infection has reached epidemic proportions in 40 developing nations. Worldwide, 23 million people are infected with the HIV virus. Because I am not formally trained in the medical sciences, I can bring in new ideas to AIDS research and the cross-fertilization of ideas from different fields could be a valuable contribution to finding the cure for AIDS. It could be easier for me to develop an AIDS vaccine than to solve the next grand challenge in computer science. You have submitted 41 inventions to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office concerning seven technologies. Can you give us expanded details? Philip Emeagwali - Inventors are reluctant to provided expanded details of their inventions until they receive full patent protection. The reason is that the Patent and Trademark Office can deny patents to inventors that publicly provided details of their invention. Briefly, my inventions are on how to design powerful computers and computations. The following is an excerpt from an interview by Susan Henderson for the book African-American Inventors, which further explains Philip Emeagwali achievements: ...Invented methods and procedures for making computers faster and more powerful. These methods enabled me to perform the world's fastest computation of 3.1 billion calculations per second in 1989 and solve the largest weather forecasting equations with 128 million points in 1990. Programmed a computer with 65,000 processors to outperform the fastest supercomputer and thereby proving that it is best to use many processors in designing supercomputers. As a result, the technology of supercomputers now use hundreds or thousands of processor to achieve their computational speed. Successfully implemented the first petroleum reservoir model on a massively parallel computer in 1989. As a result, one in 10 parallel supercomputers is used to find and recover additional oil and gas. Solved one of America's 20 Grand Challenges --- accurately computing how oil flows underground and thereby alerting the petroleum industry that massively parallel computers can be used to recover more oil. Only 30 percent of the oil in a reservoir can be recovered and this discovery will enable oil companies to recover more oil. Invented a new approach of designing supercomputers by observing and emulating patterns in nature. Invented hyperball computer networks. Formulated new mathematical (partial differential) equations for slowly moving liquids and gases such as the flow within the Earth's interior. Set world record for an unprecedented parallel computer speedup of 65536 in 1990. This experiment, involving 65536 physically linked computer processors demonstrated that the speed of supercomputers can be increased a million times. The experiment was done before the term scalability replaced "computer speedup" as an industry buzzword. In 1990, the computer industry did not understand the implications of my experiments and scalable systems. Today, scalability is cool and every vendor promises that their system is scalable. So, what does a speedup of 65536 mean to a customer conducting business on the Internet or networked computer? It means that: 1. Computers can operate continuously without any down time.  2. Commercial transactions are safe from hackers.  3. Smaller applications can to be ported to bigger computers without the additional expense of rewriting the original software. This is a form of investment protection.  4. Response time can remain constant at complex high-volume websites such as the Olympic Games, airline reservation computers, and Internet search engines. You invented the hyperball nature-inspired computer network, can you describe it for us? Philip Emeagwali - I observed that many problems that occur in nature possess a spherical structure. For example, the Earth is spherical and, for this reason, forecasting global warming is best done on a hyperball computer which has numerous processing nodes interconnected in a spherical-structure. This was what motivated me to invent the hyperball computer. Click on photograph for larger photo - Hyperball nature-inspired computer network invented by Emeagwali. The red dots represent the processing nodes while the red lines show which nodes are directly connected.                 You have described your research approach as multi-disciplinary, unorthodox, intuitive and nature-inspired. Tell us more? Philip Emeagwali - I am a mathematician who relies heavily on qualitative problem solving techniques. I studied the most influential scientists and inventors to learn what made them different from ordinary people and discovered that the most creative people in the world scored lower than expected in SAT and IQ tests and most only earned high school diplomas. Henri Poincare, considered one of the world's greatest mathematicians, had an extremely low IQ. Thomas Edison (electricity), Benjamin Banneker (clock), Garret Morgan (traffic light), Henry Ford (automobile) and Alexander Graham Bell (telephone) had 8th to 12th grade education. Bill Gates (Microsoft), Ted Turner (CNN), Bill Lear (Lear jet), Soichiro Honda (Honda cars), and Howard Hughes (Hughes aircraft) never earned a college degree. These geniuses had average IQ but made the world a better place by using their intuition. The lesson that I learned from the greatest inventors and scientists is that I will invent and discover more things by de-emphasizing quantitative methods and using a multi-disciplinary, unorthodox, intuitive and nature-inspired approach. You have stated that you have found algorithms, software and computers can be enantiomeric --- that is, they have left-handed and right-handed versions like shoes. How did you apply that observation? Philip Emeagwali - Computers that are commercially available are symmetric or non-handed but it is possible that some existing software and algorithms are left- or right-handed. I have demonstrated that you can apply a righted-handed algorithm and software to a right-handed computer. But I have not shown how to apply the right- and left-handed algorithms and software to applications. How they can be applied may depend on the thought processes that led to my discovering them. I discovered enantiomeric computing by observing everyday things such as fitting an ear muff over an ear, slipping our feet into shoes, and putting our hands inside gloves. Because I believe that humans are computers, I conjectured that computers, like people, can have left- and right-handed versions. Since the left hand has a left glove that complements it, I reasoned that a left-handed computer must have left-handed software and algorithms that also complements it. Therefore, efforts to implement a left-handed software on a right-handed computer may be as awkward as putting your left shoe on your right leg. This discovery is weird and totally unexpected. Because this discovery is new, it will take a while to fully understand its implications and applications. Our lives sometimes depends on computers performing as predicted. When an algorithm or software is symmetric, that is, has no left- and right-handed versions, it will not matter whether it is executed in a right- or left-handed computer. For example, because a pen or fork or hammer is symmetric, it does not matter whether we hold it in our right or left hand. On the other hand, a glove is either right- or left-handed and it matters whether we wear it in our right or left hands. It is possible that a right-handed computer can perform in unpredictable manner when a left-handed software is unintentionally executed in it. On the optimistic side, it might be possible that a right-handed computer may be more useful than a left-handed computer. Remember the drug called thalidomide which is manufactured in both left- and right-handed forms. One form of it causes birth defects when taken by pregnant women and the other form is safely prescribed by doctors as a sedative. The right- and left-hand versions of the lactic acid molecule.               I am most intrigued by your statements in regards to nature and technology, and how your computing networks have dealt with the awe inspiring powers of nature like the oil field flows, the weather, the movement of the oceans. Are you on the brink of solving any of nature's deeper mysteries and what does a scientist owe mother nature? Philip Emeagwali - Scientists try to discover or unravel the mysteries of nature. Some of the problems we are trying to solve have been solved in nature. My focus is not on solving nature's deeper mysteries. It is on using nature's deeper mysteries to solve important societal problems. Scientists and engineers draw their inspirations from nature. Physicists try to understand the laws of nature. Mathematicians use symbols called partial differential equations to describe natural phenomena such as weather forecasting and petroleum reservoir simulation. Computer scientists try to design neural computers that emulate the human brains. And so on. Why the choice of music for your web site? Philip Emeagwali - The music played at my web site reflects my personal taste. At home, I play soukous, highlife and reggae. Highlife has a mesmerizing effect on me. Highlife dance band music flourished in Nigeria and Ghana during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Soukous is an uptempo and infectious east African music that is a current rage in Paris dance halls. It has Congolese, Cuban and Caribbean rhythms and elements of American country music of the 1930s and 40s. Soukous live performances include energetic female show dancers and their fast shaking of the pelvis. Sokous means "shake." I always feel delirious after a sokous concert.

The Psychological Foundation

of Obama’s Political Problems

 

• by Justin Frank
• November 28, 2011 | 12:00 am
• 47 comments

 

In June 1985, Flora Lewis wrote in the New York Times that then-President Ronald Reagan said he had pounded the walls in frustration over the hostage crisis in Beirut. Given what we know about Reagan, it's not hard to believe that he would resort to such measures to express his rage.

Now try to imagine Barack Obama similarly venting his frustration at the Republicans taking his agenda hostage for political gain. Hard to visualize, isn't it?

That's no accident. Since being elected president, Obama has consistently displayed a cool demeanor, one that has confounded many of his former supporters. His detachment has led many to think that he is oblivious, disinterested, even frightened of direct confrontation. The latest instance has been his passive observation of the failure of the Super Committee, which has spurred pundits and politicians from both sides of the aisle to accuse him of lacking the fire to be president. MSNBC news host Chris Matthews, once one of the president's biggest fans, recently placed direct blame for the country's malaise on the President's lack of emotional leadership. “There's nothing to root for,” he complained.

The fact that the President has failed to address, hands-on, such a critical problem should make us realize that his reluctance to take charge is not a cognitive issue, but a psychological one. It's not that Obama doesn't understand what he ought to be doing—it’s that the structure of his personality won't allow him to constructively address the problem.

This is where psychoanalysis can be of benefit. By recognizing Obama’s behavior patterns we can illuminate the unconscious thought processes that might be influencing them. Fortunately, one needn’t treat Obama as a patient to undertake a thorough analysis of him. After all, there is plenty of public material available—not least, his autobiography Dreams From My Father—from which to sketch an outline of the President’s personality using a technique called “applied psychoanalysis.”

First, some psychological preliminaries. The President's detractors are suggesting that he doesn't feel enough passion or emotion. But a basic tenet of psychoanalysis is that everyone has rage. The question is what one does with that rage, and why.

On a psychoanalytic level, Obama is someone who tries to disconnect himself from fury through intellectual exertion and by strenuously trying to keep matters in clear focus. He doesn’t simply contain his rage or hold it inside his mind; he dissociates–a psychoanalytic term for disconnecting thought from feeling.  This allows him to operate in a purely intellectual state, protected from the disruptive influences of excessive passions.

The 1789 French Revolutionary saying, “The tongue is the enemy of the neck," describes the approach Obama has always lived by. He turns a blind eye to his own rage; he seems almost sleepwalking when others would be screaming.  This is not simply a matter of the president’s public persona pushing aside the private, enraged one.  It is a profound ability to disconnect himself from feeling the full force of his own rage.

Ultimately, this is an expression of his fear of abandonment. In fact, what appears as detachment is the latest manifestation of a long history of removing himself from the fray in idiosyncratic ways.  Growing up as a mixed-race child of two broken homes, and living in two dramatically different countries, Barack Obama learned to survive by carefully noticing everything around him while at the same time not allowing himself to feel the full emotional impact of his experience.

He dealt with loss without protest. He didn't complain when his mother abandoned him to pursue her passion for anthropology on far-flung expeditions, or when she removed him from the home of his stepfather in Jakarta when he was ten. Instead, Obama focused on surviving by getting along. He pursued inclusion relentlessly, even when circumstances repeatedly cast him in the role of the outsider. 

It's not an accident that one of the strategies he developed to maintain his membership in groups was to keep his mouth shut. Indeed, his autobiographies show that he was repeatedly taught as a child to keep his feelings to himself. His stepfather Lolo told him regularly never to complain if he were hurt or in trouble. His high school basketball teammates reinforced that message some years later. And so by keeping careful and cautious watch of his surroundings, he learned to be at home in different groups, easily shifting from one to the other.

This kind of dissociation is at the core of some his greatest political strengths. It helped him become intellectually nimble, and acutely alert to his surroundings. It's only by adapting this kind of psychic position his entire life that Obama was able to easily joke at the White House Correspondents Dinner while knowing there was an active mission underway to kill Osama bin Laden.

But assuming this perpetually peripheral role has also taken a lasting toll. The anxiety of not belonging has grown to occupy an ever-greater part of his psyche. He writes in Dreams From My Father that when, as an adult, he was walking through the most dangerous parts of Chicago late at night, the greatest fear he had was the fear of not belonging. But now there is a new tension, between his need to belong and the demands of standing up for what he believes.  The former is driven by his related fears of not belonging and being abandoned; the latter carries the risk of alienating others irrevocably. 

In material reality, his concern with alienating conservatives is wholly unproductive: it is unlikely that he can be more hated by the Tea Party than he already is. Nonetheless, he continues to relentlessly pursue compromises with Republicans that will never happen. Indeed, so concerned is he with his own degree of belonging that he jeopardizes the sympathies of those who actually have felt a natural and authentic connection to him. Whatever other political and personal advantages it confers, Obama's observational caution doesn’t give jobless participants in “Occupy Wall Street” or Wisconsin’s striking public employees the sense that he is concerned. 

Again, it's not that the President lacks passionate emotions. Indeed, given the onslaught of personal provocations doled out by his political competitors, his stores of rage are sure to be filling up. But the question of what will happen with that anger will likely be closely bound with his reelection campaign in 2012. Previously, he has found an outlet for aggression on the campaign trail: The only times he has felt comfortable being truly rhetorically confrontational are when he's standing behind a teleprompter or a podium and before a cheering audience.

There are hints of this campaign persona in the unusually blunt talk coming from the president recently, as when he warned that there “will be no easy exit ramps” for Congress as it tries to escape painful spending cuts. But it remains to be seen whether this is merely a temporary ventilation of Candidate Obama, or a more lasting change in the psychology of the President.

Of course, Obama's detachment is a pattern, and patterns aren't broken easily. In ordinary circumstances it might take years of analysis for someone so well defended to express his anger fully.  As President neither he nor our nation can afford the psychoanalytic time that takes.

In the meantime, he will likely fail to see the greatest irony of his current position. As sensitive he is to group dynamics, as the President of the United States, he is now the sole member of an exclusive group of one.  And he's going to need to push through his fears in order to avoid joining the only other group available to him—that of the ex-presidents.

Justin A. Frank, MD is a psychoanalyst, clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington Medical Center, and the author of Obama on the Couch.

 

 

Mahmoud Salem, aka "Sandmonkey"

Podcast #23:

The Sandmonkey Episode

Download sandmonkey_interview.mp3

In this week's episode, Ursula and I talk to the legendary Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey, a major figure of the online coverage of the uprising. Also known as Mahmoud Salem, Sandmonkey was an unlucky candidate in the first round of Egypt's parliamentary elections, standing in a Cairo district. He tells us about his experience there and as an electoral campaign manager in second round in Suez, and how he sees the most recent clashes between protestors and the army in Tahrir.

Show notes:

• Sandmonkey's blog
• Sandmonkey on Twitter

__________________________

URBANIZING

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION

[Egyptian soldier urinating on protesters from the roof of parliament building. Image from unknown archive.]