Warren Ellis' Social Network Bullshit Machine

Lester Spence's Page

Lester Spence United States: kspence; Share

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Where I Live: Baltimore, MD, USA

Relationship Status:: Married

Mental Status: keeping my head when all around me are losing theirs...

Website:: http://lesterspence.com

Favorite Music:: house

Favorite Comic(s): planetary, the ultimates,

Favourite Book(s): conversations in maine, the crisis of the negro intellectual, stirrings in the jug

My Plans For The Future: domination

Lester Spence's Videos

"Pour Ceux" by Mafia K1 Fry Added by Lester Spence
Walk it Out (Fosse) Added by Lester Spence

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Lester Spence added 8 songs.

Wynton Marsalis — 05 Supercapitalism

Wynton Marsalis — 07 Where Y'all At_

Derrick May — It Is What It Is

Derrick May — 03 Phantom

Nov. 4, 2007

Lester Spence added a video: "Pour Ceux" by Mafia K1 Fry

Oct. 12, 2007

Lester Spence added 3 songs.

Public Enemy — Hard Truth Soldiers (Featuring Dead Prez_MC Ren_The Conscious Daughters)

Public Enemy — Hell No, We Ain't Alright (Paris Remix)

Public Enemy — Make It Hardcore

Sep. 29, 2007

About Me

I'm currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. I specialize in racial politics, urban politics, political behavior, public opinion, and American political thought. I can be heard every now and again on NPR, and am currently working on a book about the production, consumption, and circulation of rap music as it relates to politics. I'm a father of five, a husband of one, and an amateur photographer among other things.

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Helluva Title Ain't It

War Making and State Making as Organized Crime
by Charles Tilly

If protection rackets represent organized crime at its smoothest, then war making and state making--quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy--qualify as our largest examples of organized crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past few centuries, a portrait of war makers… Continue

Posted on August 22nd, 2007 at 11:27am — No Comments (Add)

A quote from the anti-reality based community....

With no discernible material basis on which to build, this new majority at home and new world order abroad had to be fashioned from whole cloth. A Bush aide once ridiculed a New York Times reporter for belonging to "the reality-based community", which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality". "That's not the way the world really works any more," he said. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while… Continue

Posted on August 20th, 2007 at 11:45pm — 4 Comments (Add)

Has anyone else had flickr problems?

I like Ning as it stands more than Vox because of the social network thing...but I'm having extreme difficulty porting my pictures from flickr. Everytime I try I get a message that says "no username" etc. etc. etc. Is anyone else having this problem? I thought for a second it might be a browser issue but I no longer believe that is the case.

Posted on August 16th, 2007 at 2:56pm — No Comments (Add)

A Word on "Friends"

It became apparent to me that we've now reached a stage in social networking where we've got several different models floating around. On flickr you've got the option to make someone a "contact", a "friend", or "family" (although I suppose this last one really isn't an option). On facebook, there's only the "friend" option.

Whereas on facebook--where I know students, classmates, colleagues, etc.--personally I use the "friend" option AS a "friend" option. If I know you, I'll friend you.… Continue

Posted on August 15th, 2007 at 7:24pm — 3 Comments (Add)

The Plot to Take Over America...truth is stranger than fiction

I cribbed this from Open Culture.

A blurb:

In 1933, when America was mired deeply in the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office and launched federal policies to revive the economy. Many now remember well his New Deal policies. But, there were some at the time — particularly well-heeled leaders in the American business… Continue

Posted on August 15th, 2007 at 6:17am — 2 Comments (Add)

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At 6:35pm on August 22nd, 2007, Margo Eve said…: Preping for my "last semester" teaching Intro Rhetoric (long story, and not for a public forum) and NOT working on my Masters Thesis.

Which is supposed to be an analysis of the arguments against same sex marriage.

My hold up has been that I've been working on it too long and over thinking it... I've been so caught up in finding an artifact that is comprehensive in that I lost site of what is actually THERE. I suppose I wanted to be able to show that there IS such thing as a secular argument that holds up to logical testing. (Because I can't believe that _everyone _ who is against same sex marriage is religious zelot bent on disolving the wall between church and state. I've found other reasons for why non religious people would be opposed to this, but none that hold up to logic in a secular field of argument.)

If you are willing I'd love to discuss more, but via email.

So, in addition to several unforutnate events involving my family and my health that caused it to be put on hold for months at a clip, it's not done. Call it the worlds worst case of writers block.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Finances and health dictate that it is time to move on to other things.
What that is, I have no idea yet.

At 7:39pm on August 21st, 2007, Margo Eve said…: Yeah, as a Comm person I KNOW it's not that simple and only so controlable. It's difficult to _always_ account for whatever X factor is in an individual's mind/social network that will cause a message to be interpreted in a way different than it was intended.

As far as the 50cent video, a pre-survey to find a control group would be in order to find out HOW familiar your subjects are with the artist. One way to do this would be to have a few pictures of different hip-hop artists and ask them to identify each. Then watch the video without identifying who the video is by.

Having one group watch the video with the sound on and another with the sound off might be revealing. Have a group that isn't familiar with the artist just listen to the song without a video. Have another just read the lyrics to control for the nonverbal aspects of the communication. Given that aprox 70% of communication is nonverbal, AND that when in conflict, we tend to believe the nonverbal message over the verbal, I suspect each group would have different results, at least in terms of intensity of a reaction.

Of course, such a level of an experiment - at least to get significant reliable data - probably needs to happen in multiple regions, across multiple demographics. What would be best is to have a relativly unknown /up and comming artist to use for the experiment.

Anyway, just some ideas if you are looking to expand that study. Just think of me when you get a windfall of grant money to fund it. ;-)

At 6:58pm on August 17th, 2007, Margo Eve said…: See, you think like me on the subject. I can see there different parts leading to different interpretations, where as the women who were in the argument thought the other woman was blind.

One woman saw the needing of the father's approval and needing to disguise as a male as an example of patriarchal enforcement. The other woman saw the father's approval - later in the movie - as an example of a strong father-daughter bond in the context of family values. Further she cited that the need for the male characters - in order to save the day - to take on feminine traits was an example of the need to balance both masculine and feminine qualites.

All these parts taken together, I see that yet, there is still patriarchal influence (of course, the movie is set in a patriarchal time in a patriarchal culture), but in terms of a Disney production, it is a massive departure from the typical damsel in destress archetype. She doesn't end up marrying "prince chariming" and living happily ever after - instead, said prince comes to court her. There IS a message in there that a woman, in order to make her own way in life, needs to take on traits previously isolated to the realm of the masculine, however, more subtle is the message that men too can benifit from adding traits that were traditionally isolated to the realm of the feminine.

At least, that's how I see it. Isolating each piece of a puzzle works only in so far as how it fits into the entire puzzle. Which is, perhaps, why I grind my teeth when people take a piece of a message out of its greater context. News sound bytes are notorious for this. As are many people who toss around bible passages as if that was all the bible said about a given subject.

At 9:41pm on August 16th, 2007, Margo Eve said…: Hmmm. Though those three are important, especially in terms of establishing context, the messages themselves - the finished product - is probably primary to my work. How they are interpreted by others is a part of the research process - for example how one feminist sees a Disney film as supporting the Patriarchal status quo, while another one could look at the same film and see how the feminine qualities were exemplified in the characters, thus challanging the status quo.

(Yeah, that was an actual argument two women got into about Mulan.)

Really, interpretation of a message is so tied into personal and cultural experiance, that I often wonder how we ever communicate anything clearly at all.

At 5:04am on August 16th, 2007, Lester Spence said…: which is more important to you in your project, the production of the messages, the circulation of them, or their consumption?

At 1:56am on August 16th, 2007, Margo Eve said…: I study (and I use that term loosely) rhetoric (in the sense of Communication, rather than English Literature), usually as it applies to how media portrays gender and sexuality.

In other words, as a biologist disects a living thing, I pick apart messages.

Which is why your post on the rainmakers caught my interest.

And thank you for the answer. I knew I heard the phrase before. I just couldn't place where.