Ariel

Interview with Ariel Voyager

I began interviewing artists and writers from or based in South Florida about two years ago as I felt that there weren’t enough outlets to showcase and promote creatives and their projects that I felt were worthy of a larger audience. The idea was, in part, that through our conversations those works could take on a clearer relationship to the artists and their views which would, hopefully, engage people intellectually in a way other than the art form of choice and hopefully bring them some patronage.

Since I just self-published a book of poetry, I decided that I would take an hour and interview myself for the same end. In order to do this I’ve decided to name the author of the poetry book Ariel Voyager whereas the interviewer will be Ariel Sheen. This is to allow me the ability to have some humorous back and forth as well as for some somber reasons that will become apparent in the interview. I took an hour to write this, and it should take no more than 10 minutes to read.

Ariel Sheen
So when were you first introduced to poetry?

Ariel Voyager
I guess you could say at birth. My namesake comes from the British poet Percy Shelley. There’s a biography of Shelley by the same name that my father had read while in England studying with L. Ron Hubbard. Shelley signed the bottom of his correspondence Ariel, a character from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest because he so resonated with that character.

Ariel Sheen
Poet from birth then, eh?

Ariel Voyager
Something like that. When I first started to write regularly I was 16. I became involved in the West Palm Beach Poetry Slam community and for several years participated in performance poetry competitions.

Ariel Sheen
I presume you know that your collection of poetry basically has the same title as Pablo Neruda’s most renowned collection. What was the reason for that?

Ariel Voyager
Being coy I’d respond that it’s just a simplistic thematic description of what’s inside… Being candid I’d say the contemporary poetry market is something that’s ultra-niche and that if name recognition is enough to encourage someone to buy my book then so be it. The artists of today are always re-working the content of the past based on the needs of the present, so to me there’s nothing wrong with this.

Ariel Sheen
So over how long a period did you build this collection of poems?

Ariel Voyager
About 15 years. I think it shows too. You can definitely see some growth both emotionally and aesthetically in them.

Ariel Sheen
And were these all “real love poems?”

Ariel Voyager
What you do you mean by “real love poems?”

Ariel Sheen
Well excepting the ones that seem to be more about social issues related to love – like Dowry Street and Hipster Pedagogue – were most of these poems that you wrote for someone, you know, while you were in love with them?

Ariel Voyager
I’d say that most of them were written with someone that I was involved with in mind, but despite the title of the collection whether or not I was in love with them is a different story.

Ariel Sheen
What do you mean?

Ariel Voyager
Well I’d just mentioned emotional growth on my work. The majority of these poems are from my early twenties. Now being in my early thirties I would define this as a period of my life when I was emotionally stunted.

Ariel Sheen
How so? And if that’s the case, then why share them?

Ariel Voyager
I wanted to share them because though the sentiment behind some of them aren’t always “loving” in the sense of adoration and appreciation they’re still compelling as writing.

Ariel Sheen
And how has love changed its meaning to you over time?

Ariel Voyager
A lot…

Ariel Sheen
Care to go into specifics?

Ariel Voyager
Well. It’s just that that’s a big question. Do I start talking about how as a child, the period of life when most people have that modeled for them, by saying that I had no standard presented to me as to what romantic love was?

Do I start during my pre-to-late teens, when the relationships both my parents were in weren’t based on what I would call a robust feeling of love but resignation to responsibility and desire for security? Or do I begin in my early twenties, when I set my mind on being a writer and then devoured the works of Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Milan Kundera, and Friedrich Nietzsche? Do I detail how I felt intoxicated by the ideas and narratives they presented and how it had deleterious effects on my romantic relationships, my perceptions of what love is, what it could be and its relationship those seeking to pursue a life centered around the Belles Lettres?

Do I open in my late twenties, when the accumulated pain from that world view was pushing me to read psychology and counselling books so I could have a new view of love? That doesn’t seem appropriate either as it took a while for that to really seep in. Perhaps I should commence from more or less the past year, when those vacillations between the adolescent and mature world views finally stopped because I can say that I have a mature understanding of the term based upon reading and experience? I don’t know…

Ariel Sheen
Well, that certainly gives me an idea of how your views have changed. I’d asked as I noticed drastically divergent perspectives on love in poems like A Simple Request and the Ode poem compared with ones like Those Skeletons and Silk.

Ariel Voyager
Yes, well, those were all for different people at different times in my life. The latter two from when I was a teenager and was obsessed with the British Romantics. The former I wrote when in my early twenties and believed that selfish, amoral behavior was the manner in which to embody love for oneself (thanks Nietzsche!) and also up the quality of adventures that would be grist for future creative works.

Ariel Sheen
So then Menagerie, which is clearly about your ex-wife… Was that one of your mature poems about love?

Ariel Voyager
Heh, not really. I wrote Menagerie two plus years after our divorce while single. Towards the end of our relationship I’d been reading a lot of books on communication skills for couples, how to overcome fear of vulnerability, how to forgive, how to develop emotional intelligence. You know, the things that schools don’t always do because parents are supposed to but don’t always do. With this in mind I decided to write what I wanted the relationship to be like since the actuality of our life together was so divergent from what’s expressed therein.

Ariel Sheen
That’s, well, kind of sad.

Ariel Voyager
What happened, yes. But it was my fault for marrying someone that didn’t genuinely love me in a mature sense, let alone herself. To be fair I don’t think that she was alone in that. I certainly was dealing with some issues then that deserved correction. After all, we were engaged after two months of dating and two months later moved to Barcelona on a whim.

As for the poem, a couple of my friends expressed similar sentiments so I get it. But I think at this point in my life that it’s important to really understand the workings behind such an attraction and unraveling as it helps people to process the experience and guard from it’s recurrence. I’ve known far too many people that have found themselves suddenly single and broken mentally and emotionally and seem unable to move on. It was just a coping mechanism.

Ariel Sheen
Interesting. So you writing as an exercise in catharsis.

Ariel Voyager
Not just me, but scientists as well. Writing and other forms of creative outlets have a purgative effect of the negative energies we feel.

Ariel Sheen
True. Which is a good transition for the next poems I want to ask you about slash check if my periodization of your poems is correct. That means your last two poems Un/Binding and The Ascent of Icarus…

Ariel Voyager
Are the only genuinely recent poems in the collection. They are in part about my refutation of the character/caricature I’d adopted by identifying with such literary masters.

Ariel Sheen
I knew it! So you still think of them as masters?

Ariel Voyager
Absolutely. I can appreciate their craft while being critical of their content. They informed my world view at a deep level for a long time in a way that I can’t deny.

Ariel Sheen
Can you tell me a little bit more about those poems? They’re the only ones that seem to exist as a pair, they speak with the greatest urgency, they seem to display the maturity you’ve been talking about and they’re the only poems that have an element of time in them – excepting what’s clearly an addendum on Notes.

Ariel Sheen
Well, I re-connected with a former lover from my early twenties about two months ago. My muse from that period of my life. More than that, really, as I’ve not had another one since and despite several “serious” relationships. She was the only one that I felt truly understood me on a spiritual level – which speaks rather poorly to my choices for romantic companions as they were chosen more for presentation rather than personality.

Anyway, we’d first met when I’d started to fall under the spell of those writers that I talked about before. Yet despite this she elicited in me a willingness to be vulnerable – a quality I’ve struggled to embody as it makes me feel uncomfortable – and we shared what I felt to be a profound intimacy. I’m normally very intense and high energy, but when I was with her she calmed me down and I felt at ease. It wasn’t just that we had some similar issues in our upbringing, but where all of my other lovers have sought to make me their project – a lawyer, a professor, a therapist, a politician – but she just accepted me as an aspiring artist on a journey.

Which is ironic as after graduating from FAU and I sought adventures like those I’d read about in On The Road, Off The Map, The Thief’s Journal, Journey to the End of the Night, You Can’t Win, Tropic of Cancer, Sexus and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I traveled abroad in Europe for a long while and in the mean time she moved several hours by car to pursue a new career.

Ariel Sheen
So that’s the story behind the line “I proffered naught but hope a decade plus ago/That when we next see each other again it’d be like it was”

Ariel Voyager
Yeah. I’ve since looked at my journals from the time so know for sure that I rationalized my breaking off contact with her as a combination of “I’m doing her/us a favor as the distance between Jacksonville to Fort Lauderdale makes this unsustainable” and as I was hurt I was no longer able to see her. I thought I was being mature at the time and moreover realize now that then I started to shut off those parts of myself down that I’d later see as necessary for a healthy relationship to work. For a long while self-sabotage, unfortunately, was a bad habit of mine when dealing with emotions I didn’t know how to properly process.

Through some form of Facebook magic (Thanks Zuckerberg!) she popped up on my “People You May Know” feed. I liked one of her photos and we started talking again that evening, making plans to see each other two days later.

In the lead up to seeing her I was more nervous than a drug mule at a pat-down check point at the border. Over and after lunch all was great between us and the day after next, as I did not do so in person, I confessed my shame over my behavior on the phone and told her that she’d grew into the woman that I always thought she would – which was true.

She said something to me that cut me to the core. She said that the way I treated her years ago made her believe that she was “just another girl” to me. I told her there and then she was wrong, but didn’t go into the details about it that I have here. Instead I wrote those two poems with hopes of getting to know her again.

Ariel Sheen
It sounds like you still love her.

Ariel Voyager
I mean, yeah. I do. Shortly after the new year I even found myself going through old notes to find a passage I’d copied from a book I’d read not too long ago that touched on what I was feeling:

“Romantic love offers not just the excitement of the moment but the possibility for dramatic change in the self. It is in fact an agent of change… Romantic love takes on meaning and provides a subjective sense of liberation only insofar as it creates a flexibility in personality that allows a break-through of internal psychological barriers and taboos… It creates a flux in personality, the possibility for change, and the impetus to begin new phases of life and undertake new endeavors. As such, it can be seen as a paradigm for any significant realignment of personality and values.”

But I’m also aware enough of my thoughts now to recognize that an element of this attraction is my idealizing of our past, wanting to make amends and, most importantly, that her interpretation of what we shared has a very different emotional inflection than my own.

Ariel Sheen
So what do you think will come of it?

Ariel Voyager
Oh I’m doubtful anything will other than a gradual falling off. Were any of my former lovers to contact to me with such a story as the one I’ve told above I couldn’t honestly see myself giving them the opportunity to demonstrate they’ve changed. Now there’s major, major differences between them and her and of course, and the phrase “Sometimes second chances work out better than the first because you’ve learned from your mistakes” certainly comes to my mind, but I can’t downplay the truth of how hard it is for someone to shake away a negative view that’s been accepted as true for so many years. That’s brain chemistry. Years of specific neuropathic associations. I may be forgiven, as she’s told me that I am, but those make my desire to test the waters have to work extra hard against that well worn track. Plus, our physical distance makes an easy re-acquaintance impossible. I may be willing to make the effort to see and be with her, but whereas ten some years ago that was what was wanted I feel that now it just comes off as, well, weird despite my having no real desire to stay in South Florida and have because of the uniqueness of my job the ability to move wherever I’d like. Ironic when you think about it…

Ariel Sheen
Finding irony amusing instead of fighting for what you want? That doesn’t sound like you. It sounds like you’ve given up! Isn’t love worth fighting for?

Ariel Voyager
I think love conquers all, yes. But that’s not what we have now. Maybe there’s some mutual fondness over long past memories and pleasure in conversation, but beyond that I’m can’t honestly say there’s more to it. I’m a romantic, for sure! But I’m also a realist that can see that while something more would make for a great story, it is, however, unlikely.

Ariel Sheen
How does that make you feel?

Ariel Voyager
There was a time when I would have fixated on it and felt pain for not getting what I want. But I know that this would lead to another round of depression and self-medication and I’m so over that cycle so I’ll take a longer view and take comfort in the memories and the unforgettable reminder not to lower my standards as to the qualities that I should be seeking in a partner that fits my particularities.

Ariel Sheen
Ok. Interesting. Look at you Mr. Mature. Let’s move on to some other poems. I was wondering about the poem The Hipster Professor, The Leftist Demagogue and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. That poem, which has many of the qualities of a short story, seems so be referring to real people rather than placeholders for common academic stereotypes. Am I right?

Ariel Voyager
Yes, those are real people! The Leftist Professor was Simon Critchley and the Hipster Demagogue was Micah White, who would later be one of the two co-founders of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I met them both at an academic conference at SUNY Binghamton several years ago.

Ariel Sheen
Besides being critical of them, you seem to be somewhat critical of yourself there.

Ariel Voyager
Yes, well, that’s because I was. I’d wrote a draft for that poem years ago and when coming back to it was of a very different mindset. That said I still think their politics are shit.

Ariel Sheen
How do you think that love ought to operate on a social level?

Ariel Voyager
That’s a bigger question than one I’m ready to answer now. For now I’ll say that I think love relates not just to the people you choose and who choose you as a romantic partner but is evident in social values as well. In Heaven’s Mansions I try to show how selfish it is to build beautiful spaces meant to be enjoyed and wall them off. In Dowry Street I try and point out the absurdity of a society that keeps so many people close to poverty that they’re willing to turn a sacred ceremony into a means of supporting themselves. These are aspects of love, at a larger scale than exists between two people, that I think are worthy of recognition and discussion. I write about this in more detail in some of my more explicitly political poems.

Ariel Sheen
Do you have any other creative projects in the works right now?

Ariel Voyager
No, because after all of the above came to your awareness in a manner that you couldn’t avoid, you killed me.

Ariel Sheen
True. Though you have to admit it was a long time coming…

Ariel Voyager
True. So at the end of this interview let me then ask you, do you have any other creative projects in the works right now?

Ariel Sheen
In deed I do! I’m taking a break from the serial novel project I’ve been spending the past year or so doing character and historical research on to work on a comedic screenplay in hopes of it being adapted to film one day. Golden age of film and all.

Ariel Voyager
A comedy? Wow. That’s quite a divergence from your rather serial novel project.

Ariel Sheen
Yeah, well, I need a change from working on what I hope will be as impactful as Atlas Shrugged and I’ve had enough people tell me I’m funny that I think I might be able to get paid real money should I get it in the right hands.

Ariel Voyager
Well, I wish you, and thus me, the best of luck in your endeavor.

Ariel Sheen
We are not the same, but I thank you nonetheless! Bye Felica!

Noam Chomsky’s Love Poem to His Wife

That desire felt by imperialist Europeans when
First discovering a resource rich region
With a population still primarily organized along tribal lines
And no modern military apparatus
Is nothing next what I felt when I first laid eyes upon you.

My heart burns hotter for you
Than the napalm dropped
On civilian non-combatants and crops
Of Vietnamese and Cambodians
So that the U.S. could maintain
Military and economic influence
Near the regional centers
between with the world’s largest populaces.

Oh so unlike the hundreds of bodies
Of indigenous Guatemalan villagers
Tortured, killed and dumped in mass graves
By soldiers trained
At the School of the Americas
In order to protect U.S. investments
And overthrow yet another democratically elected
Avowedly socialist government,
I’ve never tried to hide my feelings for you.

Whereas newspapers
Such as the Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post and New York Times
All publish to serve the interests of the capitalists that
Control the world’s countries through their political cronies –
I have never said a word that could be construed as a lie
So when I say that I love you until the end of my life
You know that this is true.

Whenever I am around you
I feel like I am glowing –
A sensation similarly reported by those children
That have spent time playing on and around
The Russian tanks destroyed by the US’s
Depleted uranium shells in Iraq during
The first Gulf War –
And my life anxieties disappear
Like environmental activists in
South and Central America and Africa trying
To bring attention to the dispossession of indigenous peoples
And the destruction of their means of subsistence
For the benefit of foreign oil and mineral corporations.

Though you’ll never depend on me
In the same way that many
Third world satraps of US interest do –
For I cannot provide you with loans, guns, tanks, bombs
Computers, training, helicopters to throw dissidents out of,
Lists of people to be dealt with and other such spook stuff –
I hope you know that should things ever get rough
I will be the rock on which you can rely upon.

If you enjoyed reading this poem consider purchasing my first collection of love poetry or the first part of my serial novel.

Master of Science in Analytics – Analytical Tools Track

Here are the two courses tracks that I could be taking:

CSE 6040 – Computing for Data Analytics
ISYE 6501 – Introduction to Analytics Modeling
MGT 8803 – Introduction to Business for Analytics
CSE 6242 – Data and Visual Analytics
MGT 6203 – Data Analytics in Business
ISYE 7406 – Data Mining and Statistical Learning
ISYE 6413 – Design of Experiments
ISYE 6669 – Deterministic Optimization
ISYE 6644 – Simulation
ISYE 6650 – Probabilistic Models

** or **

CSE 6040 – Computing for Data Analytics
ISYE 6501 – Introduction to Analytics Modeling
MGT 8803 – Introduction to Business for Analytics
CSE 6242 – Data and Visual Analytics
MGT 6203 – Data Analytics in Business
CS 7641 or CSE/ISYE 6740 – Machine Learning/Computational Data Analytics
ISYE 6413 – Design of Experiments
ISYE 6669 – Deterministic Optimization
CS 6400 – Database Systems Concepts and Design
CS 7450 – Information Visualization

Review of “Angela Davis: an Autobiography”

When you read an account of how someone describes the highs and lows of their existence in their early 20s it tells a lot about their character. Most people are trapped in the pursuit of selfish interests, a good job, obtaining good housing and a lover to share their time with. There is nothing wrong per se with such pursuits, however often there is no balance and actions to promote community development is ignored.

Angela Davis: An Autobiography is the inverse of this typical selfish pursuit of happiness, one informed by an insightful political and philosophical recognition that as long as historically repressed and exploited communities in the U.S. were politically and economically marginalized that she, as a black woman, would always be a second class citizen if not de jure but de facto. The personal narrative that frames it makes this book something beyond a jeremiad against American Society. Instead she describes how her hopes, dreams, and aspirations along with most others with dark skins were unable to follow through on them due to the oppressive ignorance of numerous Whites.

For many years Angela Davis studied under the German Marxist Philosopher Herbert Marcuse in Europe and in California. Distinguishing herself as a serious scholar in her field, she obtained entry into prestigious study abroad programs that placed her in the center of radical student life in Europe – an important connection for subsequent speaking engagement in support of legal defense fees – while also studying historical materialism. Her engagement with historical materialism, or the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, combined with her desire for a practical outlet for her education besides being a professor is what drew her to become a member of the Communist Party USA.

Davis likes to conclude some of her anecdotes with a “lesson learned” message advocating steps to increase political awareness, make cadres function better, etc. There’s not enough of them where it reads like anecdotes mixed with catechism, but they do open up what I thought was a number of ambiguities and contradictions. In her description of working with SNCC and other parties, for instance, she claims that certain Black Nationalist groups are overly fixated upon the nationalist question, are unduly critical of socialism as a “white man’s thing” and the need for working with like-minded people. However these criticisms are said in such passing that they offer little in the way of political education to those uninitiated in the debates surrounding these and other topics.

One of the recurrent narrative elements of all of the Black Panthers stories is their arrest by police and being charged with crimes that courts of law subsequently are determine to not have been committed by them. Huey, Assata, the Panther 21, many others. Escaping with years of their lives in jails makes them a lucky one. George Jackson, for example, was killed while serving time. The prison guards staged a riot and shot him down. His death greatly affected Angela. They had formed a romantic relationship through their letters. While not able to make their affections physical, I found the connection evident from reading his letters mentioning her and her reactions here to be very compelling.

Marxist Paul Saba published a highly critical review of the autobiography in the first issue of Class Struggle magazine, stating that class which Davis praises the most and adopts is that of “…the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, with firm reliance, not on the working class, but on the liberals, the intellectuals, lawyers and professors. This is combined with the condemnation of any movements among the people which base themselves on class struggle rather than the capitulation of the revisionists.” Considering the large amount of the book which is devoted to praising legal professionals and uncritically describing her academic studies with Herbert Marcuse, that the CPUSA has largely foregone working class and African-American struggles I think that this is a fair assessment. I think the criticism is, however, unduly harsh. While I’d agree to an extent with Saba’s claim that there’s a fair degree of distance between her and African-Americans generally – a result of her education and class privilege stemming from her profession – I think the book does great service to showing the traps and barriers faced by radical activists. One can certainly think that more should be done while still respecting the effort. Rather than performing the same old song and dance about the correctness of one’s foundation of political action, as Saba does, in order to claim theoretical superiority – I think it’s better to praise the exemplary courage and determination to better the world despite the risks inherent to one’s life and liberty. This perspective, critical but also respectful, seems to me to be on display in Shepard Fairey’s poster below.

Final note: Those preferring to read the book digitally can find a free copy here.

Books I Read in 2016

Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party
The Autobiography of Assata Shakur
The Autobiography of Angela Davis
Malcolm X Speaks
The FARC: The Longest Insurgency
Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson
Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies
Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
How To Build a Girl
Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depressions
Denial of Death
The Seducer’s Diary
Game of Thrones
Lazarillo de Tornes and The Swindler: Two Spanish Picaresque Novels
Don Quixote Part I
BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family
A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida
The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics
How to Leave Hialeah
Make Your Home Among Stangers
Race to Revolution: The United States and Cuba during Slavery and Jim Crow

Review of “The Autobiography of Assata Shakur”

A former Black Liberation Army member that has obtained political asylum in Cuba for perceived lack of evidence for crimes connected to the murder of two police officers, Assata Shakur is a polarizing figure. She is still wanted by the FBI and talk of her possible return to America was discussed between respective nations bilateral trade meetings leading to online talk of her spiking to numbers not seen since legal defense committees received donations in her name for other sham trials in the late 1960s. Assata was one of many black political and cultural activists that were falsely imprisoned for hours to years based upon the whims of the judicial system. The Autobiography of Assata Shakur memoirs describes the evidence against her, the conditions of her trial, penetrating and poetic social insights, her treatment in the prison as well as her socialization with white communities under Jim Crow, her work with the Black Panther Party, etc. It is, another word, wonderful for touching on so many of the important issues of that epoch.

At a young age Assata describes herself as being very sensitive to the Jim Crow conditions which she grew up under. She tells of the isolations of being unable to play with neighborhood children because of her families purchase of a home in a white community. She describes how the low level of intellectual abilities that her classmates first had for her. Later she will also describe in detail her close relationship to two of the five young girls killed in a church bombing that happened a short distance from her childhood home.

Yet her anger is not without a certain sense of revolutionary irony. Revolutionary as while recognizing the seriousness of the situation – racially informed class oppression – she is also able to recognize the base absurdity of its claims and the essential precariousness of the various power allegiances keeping it together. For example she describes going into a shoe shop in Montgomery with her friend as a young teen. A white clerk and overweight customer look at her in red-faced anger and terror quickly take on a tone of deference granted as they speak with a French affectation and claim to be from the Martinique. They are Caribbean, the social thought of the day went, therefore exotic and ergo not black. They are conversed with by the staff as they try on shoes. Assata, at the time named Josephine, speaks in her best accent and finally breaks character. The initial angry attitudes return, however the girls can’t stop laughing. Now speaking in plain English, as they leave the store, she calls the people present out for their bigotry. There are many poetic turns of phrase and local color captured in these and other exchanges, all of which is to sound please but be immoral. Given these exclusionary experiences it is no wonder that she begins to have increased involvement in black nationalist cultural and political networks and organizations.

What makes this such a compelling book is not just the everyday heroics that comes to be displayed but also it’s structure. After childhood and arrest are covered the structure shifts to a back and forth between a horrifying depiction of what life is like in jail and narrative of her work as an activist. First one starts to become painfully aware of the cruelties of the treatment afforded her because she was a political prisoner, such as being forced to live in an isolation room for 21 months on end – a practice which was only stopped after a long struggle to get an independent investigator of the court to verify Assata’s claims. Following this Assata describes her work at a Black Panther Party breakfast program for children. She would wake up at 4am in the morning and cook for all of the children and come up with various educational programs for them to help get in the learning mood before going to school. She describes the paranoia and fears of briefly having to live an underground life as she’s just discovered that she’s again being promoted in the media as responsible for a crime that she’s not committed. And what helped her face such COINTELPRO actions? Her good skill set was recognized and she was promoted to New York to help the Party be more efficient.

Assata’s autobiography is good not only for the above, but she also reminds the reader that there were many others targeted for assassination, observation, infiltration, and social subversion through ruses, rumors, and other sorts of intelligence campaigns designed to delegitimize and destroy trust. She names three people that were connected to high ranking members of the Party that were used in FBI conceived plots to entrap or bring harm to Members. She is not, however, wholly uncritical of the Party. Some of the members are upbraided for their misogyny when she first arrives in New York. She eventually left the group as she found Newton’s ideology to be incompatible with her own, as she thought they needed to have less of a focus on the thoughts of a greater leader and more information on black history. Certainly anyone seeking to learn about black history is well served by reading this story and her other writings.

Review of “Contagious: Why Things Catch On”

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger is one of the books that inform the unique grading rubric for determining whether or not a certain campaign conceived in our daily Ideation meetings will be proposed to our advertising clients, send back for further details how it would be completed or shelved. The TL;DR book review format can turn the book into a short acronym, STEPPS, that stands for and encourages marketers to ask the following about their products:

Social Currency – Does sharing information about this make you look good?

Triggers – What cues do people have with your product, how can this be expanded

Emotion – What sort of emotion is elicited by discussion of you product and how can this be changed?

Public – What can be done to make private purchasing decisions private?

Practical Value – Can you assist others in some way by this information

Stories – Are you framing the information you want transmitted into a narrative format or just a list of product specifications?

Delving deeper into these principles, Berger presents a number of case studies that illustrates various advertising campaigns in action using these principles, correctly or incorrectly.

Being familiar with internet lore in general several of the examples provided in each of these sections, or variations therein, were those that I was familiar with. For example the $100 sandwich and the connection between 1980s anti-drug advertising, which made the private public, being seen in part as a cause for the rise in teen drug use. A larger number of them, however, I was not. Thankfully the books was written in such a way that though it consists primarily of case studies illustrating the aforementioned messaging qualities the book does not take an overly formal tone.

Reading these analyses and commentary on the over-importance of influencers, varieties of physiological arousal, presenting information in an appropriate context all are very useful not only to those seeking to raise awareness about products for sale but also for those seeking to engage in any sort of public awareness campaign. An anecdote about a healthier eating campaign on college campuses, for instance, is described how a different choice in wording (A/B testing) could have a 25% greater likelihood in encouraging students to eat more fruits and vegetables. The difference in wording? Using a general food associated terms “When you eat” versus “when you fill your tray”. The latter was more effective as it had a stronger contextual trigger – students saw this in a cafeteria.

I found the “fool in the pool” anecdote – the story about Ron Bensimhon’s break in to the Olympics and jumping from the divers deck while wearing polka dot tights and GoldenPalace.com emblazoned on his chest – to be particularly useful as a reminder for the need for correct triggers/context and being attuned to the psychology of sharing. As a content marketer, depending on the client, much of the material we produce can be quite tangential to those whose products or services we are seeking to help bring greater exposure to.

The book is a quick and easy read and I was happy to learn that some of the practices that I’ve applied to my project decisions are those that Jonah Berger endorses. This isn’t necessarily a result of my own genius, but likely from my having read Berger’s teacher’s book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. For example, a project that I’m working on I was ready to use a single broad survey as a data source for a campaign. After having read this I’m now more confident in pursuing a slightly different direction that queries less people but gets more information that will likely lead to others relating to it at a deeper level. Previously open to pursuing the least time intensive route that would likely still make the customer happy, now I can cite evidence why a small pivot could be result in much greater visibility.

Review of “Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party”

Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin is the first deep archival work that truly showcases the Black Panthers brief but pivotal role in the African-American freedom struggle, the black power movement and the New Left movements in America. While the Panthers were only an effective political machine for a mere four years, this account shows how and why they were able to attract so many under its banner despite being intensively repressed by the FBI and there being a variety of other organizations which politically radical blacks could join.

The opening chapters provide an on the ground account of the Oakland /Bay Area political and cultural scene through Bobby Seale’s and Huey Newton’s engagement with them. The organizations that would influence and be influenced by the Panthers included black nationalists, U.S. socialists, third-world communists, cultural uplift organizations, New Left groups and the government through the form of social work programs. It was their militant anti-imperialism that separated them from other organizations. Following Malcolm X’s views that the U.S. police force was akin to the troops of a colonial empire, they organized patrols to monitor the police’s activity in the community while openly armed and actively courted the “brother on the street” to become involved. At this time the organization was called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, a name that would be shortened following the expansion of social services provided and their rapid expansion into cities with large black populations.

I found it amusing that one of the Party’s early and vehement supporters mentioned several times in the book is Bob Avakian – the not yet founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party. More interesting yet is the descriptions of the organizational conflicts brought about after the Party’s spread following the California Courthouse Incident. The extensive archival work depicts a variety of factors constraining and supporting the party’s goals – be it police suppression and infiltration, or the coalition style politics that was able to support their goals.

Some of the more interesting things revealed to me in the book was the existence of an organization similar to the one that Happy runs in Unraveling in Chicago. In the chapter on the State’s assassination of Fred Hampton the authors describe the existence of a militant gang that also offered some social services and had members that would adjudicate conflict between members extra-judicially. They describe a scene wherein Fred Hampton tries to talk to their leader in an attempt for them to merge. As the FBI had started a rumor that the Panthers were going to kill their leadership if they didn’t join the tense scene of around 100 armed and militant gangsters coming into what was supposed to be an amiable meeting is very dramatic.

The closing chapters describe the changing national and international dynamics that lead to the decline of the Panthers. On the international scene the countries that had previously recognized the Party – anti-colonialist, revolutionary, socialist governments – soon adjusted their policies to engage with the United States Government. China, which had once welcomed the Panthers as a proto-government, soon broke off discussions with them. Cuba, which had spoken of using farms their nation as a training ground for revolutionary fighters and supported consciousness raising activities such as radio shows and publication of books such as Negroes with Guns, soon drastically limited the ability of those seeking shelter – such as Assata Shakur – so that the relationship with the United States would be better. Same so for Algeria, which had one seen itself and acted as if it were the leader of pan-African revolutionary movements but then had to deal with the more banal activities of governing.

Additionally much of the impetus for liberal coalitions to support the organization was taken away as the government started to concede a number of the demands of the Panthers. As the number of young Americans getting drafted fell dramatically, the numbers of those dying in Vietnam fell and the beginning of Nixon’s policy of “Vietnamization” – or turning responsibility for fighting primarily over to the South Vietnamese – those in the Anti-Draft Camp started to back off. As the government started to institute quotas for government hiring and black unemployment decreased, criticism of the state as explicitly racist became more difficult.

Lastly the split between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver was of a quality that made it difficult for current members want to stay in and outside members not to view as cause for delegitimization as a movement. Party debates are one thing, but the rhetoric turned to broad purges and internecine assassinations between the Newton/Cleaver cliques. Rather than debate the merits of Social Democratic politics, advocated by Newton, versus forming an insurgency, advocated by Eldridge, Netwon’s expulsions of those against his position inflamed tensions. This is likely because a number of the high ranking members that had been supporting Newton’s release through a wide variety of actions now saw their work as towards someone that they now fundamentally disagreed with.

After the Party has been dismantled, there is a brief account of Newton’s new life as an Oakland Mafioso. While the book clearly is focused on the Panther’s, given that Free Huey! was an international slogan and major pursuit of the rank and file membership I would have liked to have learned a little more about this. I recognize the author’s claim that those who have fixated on it seem to extend Tom Wolfe’s criticism ex-post facto in such a way as to delegitimize the Panther’s in some fashion, but I am more interested in it as a case of what sort of enterprises are formed when political aspirations are difficult to form – a la the Chicago gang mentioned earlier.

Review of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier’s Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think provides an brief history and overview of the promises, advancements, issues and implications of the big data revolution.

Big data is a social phenomenon that has significant qualitative effects that the authors state is revolutionary. Able to come about as a result of technological evolution, for the first time in history, there exists the ability for people to easily and cheaply capture and store massive amounts of data and monetize it for various uses in a variety of ways one thought impossible. This transition means that statistical methods of sampling or estimation no longer ought to be seen as the ideal manner in which various interests can extract meaning from data.

The book points out that data is rapidly becoming the raw material of business and government policy. A number of other examples include, as it related to criminal justice issues, police use the technology to determine which regions to patrol at certain times of day. In the business realm Wal-Mart, the first company to adopted datafication for it’s sales analysis systems, learnd from that that they should send Pop-Tarts to areas about to be affected by hurricanes and not NutraGrain bars. This area small examples, however, as data accumulated by some companies for insurance and banking are able to sell for hundreds of billions of dollars as they can help with predictions about the likelihood of loans defaulting.

Data, as it exists in the world, can however lead to flawed conclusions. Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier praise Google’s Flu Trends service – which analyses billions of searches into its website as well as other indicators to estimate the prevalence of flu in the United States. In 2015 Google’s estimate of flu cases was twice the actual number. This isn’t itself an issue – however – as it allows data scientists to better figure out how to quantify this without people filling out a survey every day. So, what exactly is so revolutionary about businesses having a better means of projecting items that will likely be purchased by consumers? Well, the book argues that it’s paradigmatically revolutionary and cites three shifts why this is so.

The first shift cause by big data is the ability to survey components of information from potentially a whole population instead of just sampling random portions of it. Rather than projecting based upon samples – which the authors repeatedly decry as an antiquated means of projecting (something proven by the recent election of Trump despite most polls to the contrary) – we can look at everything.

The second paradigmatic shift is that “looking at vastly more data also permits us to loosen up our desire for exactitude”. This is so as in big data, according to the authors, “with less error from sampling we can accept more measurement error”. Science is obsessed with sampling and measurement error methodologies and potential error percentages because they exist in a ‘small data’ world.

It would be amazing if the problems of sampling and measurement error really disappeared when you’re “stuffed silly with data”. But context is something that needs to be considered carefully and why it is easy to treat samples as n=all as data gathering means get closer to full coverage, researchers ought to account for the representativeness of their sample. One easy to overlook example of this relates to the digital divide.

The third and potentially most radical paradigmatic shift in understanding complex information and their relationship to each other means that people will change the “causal modality and get rid of “the idea of understanding the reasons behind all that happens.”

The traditional image of science the authors propound, however conflates principles with practices. While desire to determine causality and precision in measurements are generative mores, the authors seem to dismiss causation as something to aspire to too cavalierly with the promise of big data.

Their claim that the social sciences “have lost their monopoly on making sense of empirical data, as big-data analysis replaces the highly skilled survey specialists of the past” seems fatuous. So what if the new algorithms can review big data analyses and predictions, they only determine meaning by the means by which they are input. What others not so blinded by promise of datafication know is that even at the most granular level of practice, analytic understanding is necessary when attempting to implement these systems in the world or use them to understand the past.

Review of “The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization”

Unlike any time before in history, people have access to vast amounts of free information and with the right tools and training they can structure data in an aesthetic manner that allows non-specialists in the field to see patterns and trends that would otherwise be invisible or difficult to derive meaning from. The Functional Art by Alberto Cairo presents an epistemological overview of how people read infographics and then demonstrates how to most effectively use statistical data to make charts, maps, and explanation diagrams. Cairo does not merely present us with a list of what he considers his best works but shows the steps taken to create successful infographics and how certain forms of quantitatively measurable changes should typically be associated with certain types of illustrating change – such as box and whisker plots.

By transforming numbers into graphical shapes, readers can come to spot the stories in the data and learn new things from it with greater speed than in text regardless of the type of data you’re working with. Cairo states that most people new to the field jump too soon to the “look and feel” part, without first asking the right questions. Based upon his experience, he believes that people should first ask about what information is most important to display, how consumers of it will want to explore the information – especially if it is interactive – and then at this point start to determine the look and feel of it. Cairo, like myself, views much of the decorative additions typical of infographics, i.e. symbols or icons included that don’t really add anything other than flair, as poor design. Not that it is ALWAYS bad to include these, just it’s become the trend for them to be included at the cost of reducing effective communication.

Exegesis on this issue of approach to graphical forms takes the form of a discussion of “engineers” versus “designers”. On one extreme is Edward Tufte, who espouses a minimalistic approach to visualization. On the other extreme is graphic designer Nigel Holmes, who takes a more emotional, mimetic approach to graphic design. Cairo argues that there are benefits to both approaches and that the project itself should dictate how one processed rather than personal preference.

In the first part of the book, Cairo explicates the three main tenets of good data visualization practice: first, good graphic techniques and strategies (minimal use of pie charts, reducing non-data ink, etc.); second, how to create eye-pleasing graphics (how to choose color, fonts, layout, etc.); and, most importantly, how to use data visualization to tell a story. I think this is where The Functional Art really stands out as a great reference – Cairo shows you how to use data visualization not as a way to just show your data or to create a tool for people to explore your data, but as a way to be a storyteller with data.

One of the model’s Cairo created to help him ideate on how to develop a visualization is called the “Visualization Wheel”. The top part of the wheel indicates increased complexity and depth and the bottom part representing simplicity and lightness. The key takeaway is to provide balance to a visualization with the audience in mind. Certain audiences are likely to gravitate towards one than the other.

The next part of the book explains the eye-brain connection – how humans perceive different shapes, colors, etc. – in relation to designing good infographics. Cairo isn’t a cognitive scientist, but the skill with which he addresses these issues illustrates the depth of study he’s done of the literature and how to use this knowledge to create better graphics. These two first parts of the book are helpful for anyone those in the visualization and the graphics Cairo has chosen to include are all inspirational and make this not only a good overview of the field but also a good reference book.

In the last section of the book, Cairo profiles and interviews 10 prominent data visualization designers and visual journalists, including The New York Times’ Steve Duenes, The Washington Post’s Hannah Fairfield, Condé Nast Traveler’s John Grimwade, National Geographic Magazine’s Fernando Baptista, Hans Rosling of the Gapminder Foundation, and others.

This section is beneficial as it gives brief insights into how it is that leaders in the field approach different challenges created by their projects and to see how journalists work with the information visualization professionals in their teams in leading newspapers in different ways based upon the workplace.

In closing, The Functional Art touches upon all the important issues related to infographics such as:

Why data visualization should be conceived of as “functional” rather than fine art
A general outline of when to use bar versus circle charts
How to use color, type, shape, contrast, and other components to make infographics more effective
Differentiation between symbols and icons and help versus hurt their readability.
The science of how our brains perceive and remember information
Best practices for creating interactive information graphics
The creative process behind successful information graphics

It’s a great book for those new in the field and the clarity of expression found within was so good that I look forward to reading more of Cairo’s work.