UC 'Journo' Ryan McLendon speaks out on his solar excursion

Ryan McLendon poses with UC journalism professor Elissa Sonnenberg at The Washington Post.

My trip to the 2007 Solar Decathlon was a fascinating and harrowing experience. The Solar Decathlon is an international competition sponsored by the Department of Energy where 20 universities from around the globe compete to design and build the perfect solar house. The competition this year took place on the National Mall in Washington D.C.

I initially became involved in the U.C. Solar Decathlon InForm team not because I was an environmental enthusiast, but because I love projects. I interviewed two key members of the team, architecture student Christopher Davis, and electrical engineer Jeremy Smith. With these interviews, I was immediately inundated with the deluge of information about the way the house worked, both conceptually and mechanically. I learned about the technologies being utilized by the house, the photovoltaic panels, and the evacuated tubing, that absorbed the sun’s rays and converted them into electric power and thermal energy.

Essentially drowning in information about green architecture, engineering and living, it was only a matter of time before I too became a raging, tempestuous environmentalist. I not only incorporated green habits into my everyday life, such as recycling, using canvas bags instead of plastic and only eating at restaurants that use local produce, but I also followed the activities of the Solar Decathlon team throughout the summer and onto the Mall this Autumn.

The Solar Decathlon was a very elucidating experience. At the event, I walked around for hours talking with other teams and touring their houses. It was interesting to see how 20 different universities dealt with the same problems of design and construction. Many teams used evacuated tubing to heat water for instance, but no other team using them to heat and cool their entire house as the U.C, team did. Some team’s houses had more aesthetic value than others. The University of Maryland’s house was stunning both outside and inside and the also effectively used technology.

As a journalist, I was greatly pleased to have this real- world experience where I had to think on my feet, make the best of what I had and to find stories when they weren’t apparent. I will be at the next Decathlon.

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Some Thoughts on Torture

If you're like me, you're disgusted by the fact that Americans routinely read newspapers and watch TV news programs that treat torture as a "debate." What does it say about us that state-sanctioned cruelty and sadism is debatable at all?

It's beyond frustrating to see people playing inane semantic games surrounding the word "torture" - especially when it's often the same people who say they hate political correctness. Simulating drowning... stripping people naked, tying them up and forcing them into stress positions for days at at time... Exposing them to hypothermia... all this stuff is torture (and heaven only knows what they're doing that we aren't being told about).

I'm a fan of a magazine called Tikkun. Today I read an article from that magazine that I think encapsulates what's wrong with the "debate" over torture.

See the article here.

The topic has received a lot of media attention over the last couple of years, especially since the Abu Ghraib scandal. We are often presented with a completely false premise - that torture is about a conflict between individual human rights and gathering intelligence that is necessary for national security. It's made to sound like a difficult moral conundrum.

But there's an enormously obvious problem with that premise. All of the professionally trained interrogators I've ever heard discuss the subject say torture isn't effective in securing good intelligence. Even apart from morality, torture as an intelligence tool just doesn't work.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. If somebody "water-boards" you - which is to say they make you feel as if you're drowning without actually killing you - telling your torturer the truth is the last thing on your mind. If you "break" at all, you're far more likely to tell your torturers whatever you think they want to hear - so that they stop torturing you. You don't care about the truth. All you care about is escaping the torture.

John McCain sometimes discusses the wild things he told his torturers when he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. They once tortured him in an effort to get him to reveal the names of other members of his flight squadron. He gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line instead, just so the torture would stop. It worked. He escaped a round of torture because they didn't know the difference.

Here's McCain's Newsweek essay about torture.

Well trained interrogators understand that pain and suffering doesn't result in good intelligence. They try to get sources to cooperate rather than beating them into submission. They make sources feel like they have something to gain in helping the interrogator.

But once one understands this, current American policies concerning the use of torture become far more disturbing. I'm sure those that make policy in both civilian government and the military are fully aware of how ineffective torture is for gathering intelligence. So why use it?

As the Tikkun article points out, torture is very useful for other purposes. It's good for intimidating a population and suppressing dissent. It's also good for extra-judicial punishment. Is there someone you don't like who can't be tried in court for lack of evidence? Just lock them in a room for "questioning" for a while and consider justice served. No judges or juries necessary.

Is this what we've come to? Is this what we as a nation stand for?

~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ

The Cincinnati - Hamilton County Community Action Agency Annual Luncheon

I went to the Cincinnati - Hamilton County Community Action Luncheon this morning. It was surreal and exciting and disappointing all at the same time. I'll probably write more about this later, but here are some of my initial thoughts.

The keynote speaker was Juan Williams, and I was there to ask him a question, get a quote, or make some kind of brief contact with him. For those who don't know who Juan Williams is, he's one of the premier journalists in the country right now. He's a senior correspondent for NPR (He hosted "Talk of the Nation" for 2 years) and is a political analyst for Fox News (he's the black guy you might have seen arguing with Bill Kristol on cable TV). He spent 21 years building a massive reputation writing for the Washington Post.

I managed to get there through the efforts of Elissa Sonnenberg, Queen of Contacts. She got me on the phone with Mason Gray, who was one of the committee members organizing the luncheon for the Community Action Agency (CAA).

There was an interesting mix of people there. Some were volunteers with the school children the Community Action Agency (CAA) were involved with, including doctors, teachers, and grandmothers that read with children at the library. The president of CAA, Gwen L. Robinson, was also there and delivered a rousing speech. Jenell Walton, WCPO anchor and president of the Cincinnati chapter of the NABJ, was the EMCEE of the event. There were also plenty of political movers and shakers sitting a couple of tables from me, including a few representatives of the Ohio House of Representatives and Ohio Senate, Cincinnati Vice Mayor David Crowley, Todd Portune of the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners, and U.S. House of Representatives Congresswoman Jean Schmidt.

It was surreal. Two days before I hadn't even heard of this event, and I didn't know so many of the city's influential people would be there until I saw them there. And there I was with my cheap blue jean jacket on. As someone guided me to a table, I kept saying to myself, "I should have worn a tie." I exchanged a (very) few words with Schmidt at one point, and I wondered if Jenell Walton recognized me from the Cincinnati ABJ meeting I attended a month or two ago. And that weird inner voice kept going on and on "Get your elbows off the table, man! This one might really count!"

I could go on and on about that odd experience, but for now I'll say two things:


1. I didn't get what I came to get. I didn't get even a brief moment with Juan Williams. I ran out of tape in my recorder and didn't even capture the incredible speech he gave. (I should have expected it to go long and for him to speak at the end. Live and learn I guess.) Even so, I think it was a useful experience. Like a lot of journalists that are just starting out like me, I've never seen Democrat and Republican politicians that I've read about or even written about sip tea together a couple of yards away. I knew that these people were real and human intellectually. But to see them munching on the same gourmet chicken you're munching on... to see them ask for a drink from the same server who just took away your plate - that's a horse of a different color. And if Jean Schmidt or Juan Williams or Jenelle Walton saw me today, I'm sure they wouldn't even remember I was there. Despite my faux pas, for a moment I really could have just walked up to these people like I would a classmate or a professor, even if I felt tiny and unimportant. If a social misfit like me can avoid making fool of himself, anyone can.


2. Stuff like this requires planning and sacrifice. I tried to wedge this in between class at UC and work at Micro Center in Sharonville. Had I planned for it better or been willing to really tick off my bosses at work, I probably could have made much more of an opportunity out of this than I did. All sorts of previously unforeseen things worked against making it a bigger success. The device I was using to record the event was wrong (my digital recorder's special lithium battery had recently gone out and they aren't available in stores - hence the tape recording fiasco). The place I parked was wrong (I was lucky I didn't get a ticket). The clothes I wore tripped me up (that subtle lack of confidence was probably influential). So remember, even when you have short notice, you have to find a way to plan, plan, plan.


~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ

Arrested Development is Back!

I guess I'm officially on a Hip Hop streak now.

If you had asked me about the state of the Hip Hop music industry just a little while ago, I would have been very pessimistic. It looked like materialism, gangsterism, and chauvinism were winning the day, and socially and spiritually conscious Hip Hop was being relegated to the margins.

I think we can all agree that commercial success doesn't make an artist good. But it can help us get a handle on the media exposure a particular artist's work is getting. For once, real Hip Hop seems to be coming to the fore. Look at what's happened this year.

Exibit A: Common, a rapper who's been underrated for a long time, is going mainstream. A couple of years ago, before the album Be came out, if you asked most casual Rap fans who Common was, you would've gotten blank stares. In the course of the last year he's appeared in two big budget films (Smokin' Aces and American Gangster) and advertisements for the Gap. And lets not forget his latest album Finding Forever debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. That means he's almost certainly becoming a household name among people who don't even listen to rap.

Exibit B: Talib Kweli is in a similar situation. His latest album Eardrum debuted at #2 on Billboard. I think you can officially say he's no longer underground. The HP-commercial-inspired "Hot Thing" video is so clever, I had to put it on the blog. (For purely journalistic reasons, of course.)

Exhibit C: After a 12-year absence from U.S. charts, Arrested Development, the drum majors of the Afrocentric wave in the early '90s, put out a new album, Since the Last Time, on Tuesday (10/30/07). They were everywhere for a hot second. Remember all those folks wearing Malcolm X caps blasting the song they made for the soundtrack of Spike Lee's film? I've heard a few tracks of their album (check out the Arrested Development website), and think they have a real shot at hitting it big again. I'm pretty broke, but I can't help but part with few dollars for stuff like that.

If Lauryn Hill were to announce she's finally working on a third album, somebody will have to pinch me. That would make my day. Or week. Or month.

So let it be written, so let it be done. Real Hip Hop is on the rise. But as LL would say, "Don't call it a comeback." They've always been there. They're just finally getting the public recognition they deserve.

It's about time.

~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ

Know What I Mean (part 2).

First, I went and looked up a little on his books and viewed a couple of videos of Dyson. I'd almost forgotten how intense and opinionated he is. I thought I'd put up some YouTube videos from some of his TV appearances so those less familiar can get an idea of what he's like.

But I want to warn you. He speaks in very frank and potentially offensive terms - and by that I don't mean to say that he uses profanity. What I mean is that he makes little effort to shield the harshest of criticisms from those who disagree with him. As I read his words or listen to him speak, I often think "Whoa, calm down just a little bit. Maybe you should do a little more showing and a little less telling." But I'm (trying to be) a journalist and he's not, so maybe it's OK for him.

I want to stress that I don't agree with everything he says here, but it seems like a good starting point for discussion.

On a related note, I thought of a couple of other points about the question from his website, "Is Hip Hop good or bad for the culture at large?"

Michael Eric Dyson's website

* Is it possible for it to be bad for the culture but good for the people of that culture? Put another way, maybe Hip Hop, despite its relative commercial acceptance, still carries enough of a novel edge to shake people out of complacency and represent those that are unheard otherwise. The best of Hip Hop might be thought of as a threat to the status quo, and thereby "bad" for "the culture," but because lending voices to the voiceless is itself a threat to the culture as it is. Maybe being "bad for the culture" is something to be applauded.

* This may seem random, but something about the other responses I saw on his site reminded me of a piece of theology I studied in Sunday School and college religion classes.

Some theologians argue that evil is "noncreative." The idea is that creation is a positive activity that evil is incapable of. All evil can do is corrupt or pervert something that is "originally" or fundamentally good. Good creates man; all evil can do is corrupt that man. Good creates beauty, all evil can do is corrupt it into ugliness. Darkness is merely the negation of light, not a material or energy of it's own, etc. etc. In many Western and Middle Eastern traditions, bad requires good to survive, while good doesn't necessarily require bad (Eastern thought often places them on more equal footing).

What the heck does this have to do with Hip Hop? Maybe it's negative trends (criminality, misogyny, violence, etc.) only have potency because they are drawn from a positive source. For instance, maybe the only reason people identify with gangsters in Hip Hop is because they are a perversion of a culture that, on a more fundamental level, imbues a sense of self agency and identity to those that have trouble finding their human identity affirmed by the culture around them in other ways. Maybe the violence is only compelling because it draws on the sense of justified anger and/or righteous indignation that helped form the core of Hip Hop's expression.

Or maybe I'm just full of it. The rest of you out there are probably a better judge than me.


~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ