Sunday, June 30, 2013

In case you wondered …

… How the Human Body Evolved to Throw Fastballs | Surprising Science. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Gathering for freedom …

… Protests in Egypt.

See Anti-Government Protests Sweep Egypty.

Creative possibilities …

… Joel Weishaus-Beginner's Mind, a Blog of the Depth Humanities.

For the sabbath …

… Issa's Untidy Hut: I'd Rather Be High: Issa's Sunday Service, #169.

The obligation to remember …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `Pride Was Repelled by Sterner Pride'.

The destruction of understanding …

'In the Fog,' Reviewed by David Thomson: Life Under Occupation | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I don't know about anybody else, but increasingly, I feel as if this country is under occupation by the current administration. See The Sprawling, Dimming Age of Obama.

Pecking order …

… The Debriefing — Unqualified Offerings. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Self and experience …

… Maverick Philosopher: Sam Harris on Rational Mysticism and Whether the Self is an Illusion.


It seems to me, however, that the nonexistence of what I fail to find does not logically follow from my failing to find it. 
It may be that the self is the sort of thing that cannot turn up as an object of experience precisely because it is the subject of experience.
Here is my own analogy: The self is like light, which itself is invisible, but by means of which we see what is visible. This analogy also may be applied to God. It works both ways because it is by virtue of having a self that we may be said to be made in the image and likeness of God.

Hardly surprising …

… RealClearMarkets - With the Environment, Paul Krugman Forgets the Poor.

He is, after all, a member in good standing of those college-trained elites, and they don't call them elites for nothing.

Spinning wheels …

… Literary Cycles | By Micah Mattix - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Predictions and Predictors

Baseball is far from the only area in which predictions can disappoint, and in recent years, a handful of writers have drawn attention to the biases and habits that influence our ability to make good forecasts. The two most recent entrants in this category, Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise and Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile, appeared to wide acclaim in late 2012, with each author winning scores of favorable reviews and profiles; both received invitations to Silicon Valley to speak at Google’s prestigious Authors@Google series within weeks of each other. The two books, then, seem to have captured the zeitgeist—despite having largely contradictory messages and methodologies.

Inquirer reviews …


… Linguistic maze's triumph, tragedy.

A thought for today …


It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
— Czeslaw Milosz, born on this date in 1911

David Cameron indeed...

A two-year-old has become the youngest member of British Mensa after taking an intelligence test that ranked him smarter than Barack Obama and David Cameron.
The obvious remarks are made in the Comments.

May she be shunned …

… The Face of Cowardice: Theresa May : The Other McCain.

Of course this reflects badly as well on David Cameron, who has yet to impress me in any way whatever.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Children and Resiliency

It's obvious why deprivation hurts development. The mystery is why some deprived children seem to do so much better than others. Is it something about their individual temperament or their particular environment?

20% -- one-fifth -- of trans people kill themselves.  Many of the remainder pride themselves on their resiliency.

RIP …

… Kenneth Minogue | Power Line. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Strange …

I Did Not Vanish: On Writing - The Rumpus.net. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I cannot identify with this, but I can sympathize with, as I think any decent person must.

Well-trained fascists …

… Ed Driscoll — ‘The Tyranny of Choice’; the Boredom of Academia’s Summer Reruns.



That efficient strategy was the work of Herbert Marcuse, the political theorist whose ideas are generally credited with creating the basis for campus speech codes. Marcuse said, “Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed.” Marcuse created political correctness.
So much for civil dialogue. Exactly who determines what cannot be expressed, and how we know they're right?p

Time's wingéd chariot …

… First Known When Lost: "All That I Loved I Love Anew, Now Parting Draweth Near".

The road to battle …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `Hastening to Gettysburg'.

Retiring maybe, but hardly retired …

… How Woody Allen Sees It - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The silence …

… J.D. Salinger and Eastern religion: Are there any lost books still in the vault? - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


In the end, I had to respect Salinger for his choice of a deeply serious version of the Eastern mysticism he assaults readers with in the late fiction. Maybe that was the problem. For all his disclaiming of the Mind—in the Morgan letters he warns against “mind” as if the Mind were a beast in the jungle waiting to devour the devout—he was seduced by the sheer intelligence he found herein. Because I believe, of his own sheer intelligence.

Nice try …

… Liberal Opposes Immigration Refotrm | New Republic.

Most of America’s college-educated elites are little affected by illegal immigration. In fact, it’s often a benefit to us in terms of childcare, household help, dinners out, and other staples of upper-middle-class life. Many therefore view the problem as akin, in severity, to marijuana use—common but benign, helpful to the immigrants and minimal in its effects on Americans or anyone else. I know, because it used to be my own view.

What the author doesn't seem to realize is that these same college-educated elites also don't care about low-wage American workers.

Vintage commentary …

… Vladimir Nabokov: The Art of Translation | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A miracle amid the ordinary …

… Zealotry of Guerin: The Healing of a Madman (Vittore Carpaccio).

All literature has the potential to be Christian literature.

Moses knew the Egyptian library and Daniel the Babylonian, but the most famous picture of this is the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill. Surrounded by idols, enveloped with pagan superstition, Paul didn’t quote Leviticus or Isaiah. He shared the gospel with pagans by quoting more pagans, namely the astronomer Aratus and his poem The Phenomena. “In him we live and move and have our being,” quoted the apostle, a line he put good effect (Acts 17.28).
On at least two other occasions Paul did the same thing, likely quoting Epimenides of Crete in Titus 1.12 (“Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons”) and another poet in 1 Corinthians 15.33 (“Bad company ruins good morals”). While early church historian Socrates Scholasticus ascribed the 1 Corinthian quote to the Athenian tragedian Euripides (Ecclesiastical History 3.16), it turns out the quote is more likely from the comic writer Menander and his play Thais.

I think, without checking, that C.S. Lewis, or maybe Chesterton, and even John Paul II made the point that other stories, and other religions, recapitulate, however imperfectly, the impulse of humankind to describe and worship the Divine.

A thought for today …

 A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing's left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born on this date in 1900

A father's heart...

Serendipity...

The impulse to preserve...

Friday, June 28, 2013

Online now …

… Vol. 34, No. 1 (2013) | New England Review.

This will disappoint many …

… Climate panic: Ecological collapse is not upon us, and we haven’t run out of oil or silver or copper or zinc. — Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


… the authors of The Limits to Growth predicted that before 2013, the world would have run out of aluminum, copper, gold, lead, mercury, molybdenum, natural gas, oil, silver, tin, tungsten, and zinc.
Instead, despite recent increases, commodity prices have generally fallen to about a third of their level 150 years ago. Technological innovations have replaced mercury in batteries, dental fillings, and thermometers: Mercury consumption is down 98 percent and, by 2000, the price was down 90 percent. More broadly, since 1946, supplies of copper, aluminum, iron, and zinc have outstripped consumption, owing to the discovery of additional reserves and new technologies to extract them economically.

New rules...

Steel in bones...

Another back seat for blogging …

Another doctor's visit is on the schedule today, so blogging once again will have to take a back seat.

The Dangers of Making Reading Spiritual

Priests tell us we need religion. Therapists tell us we need therapy. Writers, with a parallel enthusiasm, insist that we need reading. “The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy," says Flaubert. “There is no friend as loyal as a book," announces Hemingway. "Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul," insists Joyce Carol Oates, who has apparently never seen a movie or had a conversation.

A thought for today …


When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.
— Luigi Pirandello, born on this date in 1867

Private conversations. ..

...The reader on Robben Island

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Huh?

… Gerard Streator Pleads Guilty To Having Sex With Couch.

If the couch was a consenting adult I see no problem.

Coming of Age...

...and Catcher in the Rye

Hmm …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `Have They Legs and Eyes?'

I'm sure that Emerson was as capable of thinking, speaking, and writing bullshit as any of us, but I'm not sure that  “Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind” can be accounted such. It's a fairly time-honored view (see Pico della Mirandola's oration on the dignity of man). Man as microcosm may be hard for contemporary man to grasp, but earlier generations didn't have that problem.

Watch and listen …

… ART BLAKEY and THE JAZZ MESSENGERS, Children Of The Night - YouTube. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Oh, really …

… THE TRIAL OF POPE BENEDICT by Daniel Gawthrop | Kirkus. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The author also thoroughly documents the broader context of the hierarchy's theological and political commitment to overturn the legacy of Vatican II.
I'd like to know who the members of the hierarchy mentioned here are. Not the late Cardinal Bevilacqua, whom I knew (and rather liked, actually). The Church is run by the heirs of Vatican II and no one is more reactionary than an aging revolutionary. Benedict was unusual in recognizing that something he had helped bring about had gone terribly wrong.

The author shows how resurgent opposition to discussions of reform initiated during the pontificate of John XXIII—e.g., birth control, abortion, ordaining female priests—provided the ground under which the now-exposed coverups of priestly rape and sexual abuse could take root.
I suppose this tells us all we need to know about this review. Abortion is not a "reform" the Church is ever going to entertain.

RIP …

… Roger’s Rules — Free speech in the UK: Sayonara.

The irony of the situation is rich. Geller and Spencer speak out against the intolerance of Islam.  Got that? They speak. They lecture. They write books.  Spencer’s written a shelf of them. Geller was behind a campaign to place “defeat jihad” posters in New York subways.  One of the reasons they were traveling to the UK was to participate in a commemorative ceremony for Drummer Lee Rigby. Remember him? He was the chap who last month was walking down a street in Woolwich when two Muslims ran him down in a car and then stabbed and hacked him to death with knives and a cleaver. Like the Earl of Stratford, their motto was “Thorough.” When these partisans of the religion of peace got through with him, he had to be identified by dental records. Geller and Spencer are denied entry to the UK.  Quoth a government spokesman: individuals whose presence “is not conducive to the public good” may be denied entry by the Home Secretary. He explained: “We condemn all those whose behaviours and views run counter to our shared values and will not stand for extremism in any form.”

Quieting the hysteria …

… Gay Marriage Is Just One Piece of the Puzzle | Via Meadia.


… the Supreme Court and public opinion are demanding the return of more powers to individuals and states. DOMA, pot legalization, the limits on the Voting Rights Act, and a rash of new state limits on abortion all point to a strong public interest in the decentralization of power.

Why it's the national pastime …

… Baseball by John Updike | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Belated blogging …

I have to with my wife to the doctor's this morning. So blogging will resume sometime later.

My latest column …

… When Falls the Coliseum — To see like a child.

Nothing is simple about childhood. It is an inchoate mass of urges and impressions. We haven’t sorted things out yet and, from the outset, we have nothing to go on. No one ever does. There is perhaps no more perfect image of the human condition than the look of consternation and perplexity one sees sometimes on the faces of toddlers. Somehow, over time, we get a handle on things, and it would be nice to know what combination of sense and judgment we employed to do that.

A thought for today …


To study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.

— Lafcadio Hearn, born on this date in 1850

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

A look at the spy game …

Paul Davis On Crime: Spy: Discover The Secret World Of Espionage And Spy Technology At Philadelphia's Franklin Institue.

Sonorous abstractions …

… Orwell Watch #24: And the prize goes to … Stanley Fish! | The Book Haven.

It probably would have been a good idea for the Academy of Arts and Scienes to find an actual humanist to prepare their report. But they probably wouldn't know one if they saw one


A fond and familiar memoir …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `An Utter Want of Parade in Everything He Said'.

Hmm …

What Do Most Philosophers Believe? A Wide-Ranging Survey Project Gives Us Some Idea | Open Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

So most don't believe in God. Be interesting to know what they understand the term to mean.

Everything else …

… A Wretched Defense of the Humanities.

Questioning …

… E BOOKS | Mail Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Does he matter?

...Karl Marx: a Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber – review
Its bible, of course, was Das Kapital – although few cadres actually bothered to read it. And Sperber again shows the relative anachronism of Marx's thinking by the 1870s. At its core was not an epic crisis of capitalism (there had been too many false dawns for that), but the question that David Ricardo and Adam Smith had been wrestling with since the late 1700s: the falling rate of profit. Marx tried desperately if vainly to offer an answer, but meanwhile the world was changing around him: industrial processes were reframing rates of surplus value; colonial markets were transforming the metropole's economics; the mid-Victorian boom meant a growing middle class; a new service sector was emerging ("from the whore to the Pope, there is a mass of such scum"); and marginal utility theory was stressing the market interaction of consumer preferences. Yet Marx was still wrestling with James Mill and Thomas Malthus.

Straightforward stories …

… 1p Book Review: Jane Gardam — The Dabbler.

Death, the dismantler …

… First Known When Lost: Lot 96 And Lot 304: "The Ghost Dogs In The Vanishing Gardens".

Small is powerful …

… Nassim Taleb: 'The Black Swan' author in praise of the risk-takers - Business Analysis & Features - Business - The Independent. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


His reasoning is deliciously simple: "It's much easier to bullshit at the macro-level than it is to bullshit at the micro-level."

In this corner …

… Why is modern poetry so bad?

… Why Is Contemporary American Poetry So Good? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


Defamiliarizing …

… A Good Gatsby | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… some American critics view Luhrmann’s adaptation as simply unfaithful to the book; having been taught the somewhat anodyne version of Gatsby canonized in the second half of the twentieth century, they fail to grasp that, by going back to the original sources, Luhrmann has in fact produced not only a more provocative but also a more fully rounded reading of Fitzgerald’s great novel. 

Troubadour …

… Restless Wanderer | Bob Dylan | By Bill Wyman - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A thought for today …


I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
— Pearl Buck, born on this date in 1892


In case you wondered …

… How to Write a College Application Essay | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Indeed …

Viewpoint: The Food Network Should Give Paula Deen Back Her Job | TIME.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

This story is one you couldn't make up. Actually, I hope some other network hires her and the Food Network gets boycotted.

Macklemore, Same Love and propaganda


So you have Theology of the Body or the arguments of natural law versus the word–image association of Macklemore—that’s not likely a ripe conversation—and Macklemore has a lead of 48 million views and a culture moving in his direction, not only in its beliefs but in its vocabulary.

That’s where the difficulty lies, not only in the conflict of judgment—conjugal versus revisionist beliefs on marriage—but in the mode of discourse, the process of how meaning is made.


First Things used to be a well done journal, primarily driven by Richard John Neuhaus.  RIP.  But now it has come to this.  A lament that there is no effective propaganda for “our side.”  Even though the article itself attempts to use communication techniques in carrying its message, i.e., it is propaganda too.

It might be much better, and more convincing, to come away from standard Catholic arguments regarding marriage, the potential procreative argument or even the complimentarily one, and think up new ones, because neither one really is all that effective.  Because they fail.  The procreation argument fails of its own weight.  Ban marriages by any woman who is past menopause?  Really?  The complimentarily one fails because the Bible contains examples of Christ blessing those who weren’t married, or who had five husbands and was living with one who was not her husband.  In fact, the Samaritan woman at the well brought His Good News to her village, and caused many to believe.  Christ truly has His apostles everywhere and in every guise, and you who think they know best are like those disciples who tried to stop others from preaching in his Name.  Christ's Good News was simple.  Love.  And not your definition of Love.  But God’s. 

One of the true First Things necessary to carry that message is don’t be like the Pharisees, busy making rules.  He saved His strongest condemnation for them, for the rule makers.  And He showed the most love to those who believed in Him.  Without rules.  After all, nowhere in the Bible does it say that He condemned the Samaritan woman at the well for her five husbands, or her living in sin.  Rather it says because of her testimony many believed.  And the Bible has Christ saying nothing more about her.         

Calling D** B****

Old-time medicine …

… AbeBooks: From Anatomy to Phrenology: Collectible Medical Books.

Q&A …

… 10 Questions for Michelle Cahill | Fox Chase Review.

Anthology of consequences …

A Romantic Comedy | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Shakespeare’s late turn to romance is actually a return to a genre that was popular in his youth. So it makes sense that one of his earliest comedies would be framed in this way. But whatever the reason for that framing, the impact of taking that framing seriously, of remembering it when thinking about the farce that takes up most of the play, is to deepen the play, and the pathos of its comedy, considerably …

Surprise, surprise …

As More Attend College, Majors Become More Career-Focused - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Albert Jay Nock predicted this in his 1930 book The System of Education in the United States. Nock distinguishes between education and training and notes that just about everyone is trainable, but that not everyone is educable. Since in America what is thought to be good for anybody is presumed to be good for everybody, the only way to make education available to everyone is to call training education and to make all schools training schools. We see the result all around. The President, members of Congress, the justices on the Supreme Court are highly trained in something. But how many of them are really educated? The difference, by the way, between education and training is that the former is formative and has to do with character, while the latter is instrumental and has to do with technique. As Nock puts it, applied to the proper subject, education produces something in the way of an Emerson; training, applied to the proper subject, produces something in the way of an Edison.

The enterprise that is imagination …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `He Spares Nothing; He Damns Nothing'.

The marketing of science …

… The Age Demanded an Image | Books and Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Gladwell himself is not just allergic to traditional ethical discourse; the threat of it sends him into a sort of intellectual anaphylactic shock: in What the Dog Saw alone, he writes the blame out of the Enron scandal, the missed warnings about 9/11, and the Challengerdisaster. Gladwell's essay about this last tragedy has, in fact, a decisive counterweight in the popular media: Richard Feynman, the greatest physicist alive at the time, summarized the accountability by dropping O-rings into ice water at a press conference. This showed that, contrary to their manufacturer's claim, they could become inflexible in predictable atmospheric conditions, allowing a fuel leak from the joints they were supposed to be sealing. The Space Shuttle's design and operation weren't a hopelessly complex system to Feynman (hopeless complexity being Gladwell's standard plea, even though he acknowledges that complexity can be artificial and a blind)—nor to the public, when a truly expert, objective scientific communicator stepped forward.

Q&A …

… “Copperhead”: An Interview With Bill Kauffman | Uncouth Reflections. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Bad enough to move us...

Hmm …

Journalist Michael Hastings sent chilling email to colleagues before death | Fox News.

RIP …

… Richard Matheson, Author of I Am Legend and Many Other Classics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A thought for today …


In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
— George Orwell, born on the date in 1903

Critic's choice

… Top 10 American literary critics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Monday, June 24, 2013

Red Smith and his columns

The style of writing Smith excelled at, which re-creates for the reader what goes on during athletic competitions, is almost dead, for reasons both technical and technological.
One of the strengths of the Inky and the Daily News has always been sports writing.

Towers, tusks, and the creative upsurge …

… Nabokov on Inspiration and the Six Short Stories Everyone Should Read | Brain Pickings. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Born to fake …

Book Review: "Middle C" by William H. Gass - Identity Theory. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… this is probably Gass’s most accessible work of fiction in the way it provides a conventional emphasis of sorts on character and events, even if finally the reader must be wary of extending complete sympathy to Joseph Skizzen, or even of entirely trusting that we have gotten a strictly accurate account of Skizzen’s life. The novel’s final episodes involve Skizzen’s potential exposure as a fraud, the story he has created about himself and his life a fiction. 

Slang judgement...

In case you wondered...

Q&A...

...Bookforum talks with Karl Ove Knausgaard
One of the interesting things about the stories in the Old Testament is that the major ones are so short—Cain and Abel, for instance, is told in eight lines or so. That’s amazing, considering the impact that story has had, and continues to have, in the culture. For me, in my own writing, that kind of concentration is impossible—when I have written a hundred pages, if feels like I’ve said nothing.

Roundup …

… The TLS blog: Radio 4 Book of the Week - and other Alexandrias.

Poet in prose …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `Recorded in Faultless Words'.

I rather like Emerson, and I think that Thoreau's poem "I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings" is quite readable.

Lamentation …

… The Decline and Fall of the English Major - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

They can assemble strings of jargon and generate clots of ventriloquistic syntax. They can meta-metastasize any thematic or ideological notion they happen upon. And they get good grades for doing just that. But as for writing clearly, simply, with attention and openness to their own thoughts and emotions and the world around them — no.

I noticed this back in the '70s when I was editing people's doctoral dissertations. The authors simply rearranged blocks of thought that been passed on to them in the classroom. It was unclear if the had ever thought about any of the material in a critical way. They all got their degrees, though.

Quirky takes on the day-to-day …

… Ira Glass on This American Life: 'Traditional broadcast media seems old-fashioned to me' | Television and radio | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Hear, hear …

… ACLU to Obama: ‘We are tired of living in a nation governed by fear’ | WashingtonExaminer.com.

Faith and reason …

… Maverick Philosopher: Anthony Flood on Philosophy as Misosophy, Part I. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Reason is weak and philosophy, whose engine is unaided reason,  cannot deliver the goods.  The salvific wisdom we seek it cannot supply.  It remains an interminable and inconclusive seeking, but never a finding; it remains forever the (erothetic) love of wisdom, not its possession.  So we look beyond philosophy to the data of revelation.  But how do we authenticate such data?  How do we distinguish pseudo-revelation from the genuine article?  By what marks is it known?  We are thrown back upon our infirm reasoning powers to sort this out.

Putting things in perspective …

… James Gandolfini Helped TV Get Serious About Dramia | Masterpiece by Terry Teachout —WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A thought for today …


Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
— Ambrose Bierce, born on this date in 1842

Old opponents...

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Young Ernest …

… Paul Davis On Crime: 'My Life In The Bull Ring With Donald Ogden Stwart': Ernest Hemingway's Last Word From Beyond The Grave.

Secrecy binge …

… Schneier on Security: Government Secrets and the Need for Whistle-blowers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

One-stop rebuttal …

… Edward Feser: Mind and Cosmos roundup. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

For the sabbath …

… Issa's Untidy Hut: Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Issa's Sunday Service, #168.

On the other hand maybe esse est percipi

Perception: Don’t be so certain your senses are telling you the truth.

Terminus ad quem …

 First Known When Lost: Bourne.

Joyce, Hopkins, and secrecy …

… Cryptogams and the NSA | Warscapes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

There is nothing more frightening for a pseudo-intellectual than to be called out to explain something he does not actually understand. I cancelled my first appointment with the feds—Special Agents O’Brien and Bloom—just to brush up. The fact that one of the agents was named Bloom filled me with foreboding. I spent 48 hours reading secondary texts to assure myself of relevant theories of textual interpretation. I didn’t want to sound uninformed. Notes from the interviews would become part of the permanent historical record. It filled me with anguish to think of my sons reading the FBI Form 302 interview notes decades later and realizing their father was a fraud. 

Anti-romantic clown …

 … Anecdotal Evidence: `Comedy of One Sort or Another'.

Writer and editor …

… Truth of the Matter | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Attempts have been made in recent years to elevate serious nonfiction, to pump it up into the realm of high literature. In their day, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote claimed to be writing nonfiction novels, by which they meant little more than that they brought a fiction writer’s sensibility, and a few of the techniques of the novel, to factual material. In some academic circles, nonfiction is referred to as “literary nonfiction,” or—man that pump: huff, puff—as “creative nonfiction,” and a magazine calledCreative Nonfiction has been in existence for nearly 20 years now. But is nonfiction in all its various subgenres sufficiently unified for a book of advice on how to write it likely to be of much value?

Inquirer reviews …

… The story behind the church sex-abuse scandal.e story behind the church sex-abuse scandal

Language and physics and cleanliness

The fact that the mathematics allows for gazillions of variations is seen to be evidence for gazillions of actual worlds.

This kind of reification of equations is precisely what strikes some humanities scholars as childishly naive. At the very least, it raises serious questions about the relationship between our mathematical models of reality, and reality itself. While it is true that in the history of physics many important discoveries have emerged from revelations within equations — Paul Dirac’s formulation for antimatter being perhaps the most famous example — one does not need to be a cultural relativist to feel sceptical about the idea that the only way forward now is to accept an infinite cosmic ‘landscape’ of universes that embrace every conceivable version of world history, including those in which the Middle Ages never ended or Hitler won.

In the 30 years since I was a student, physicists’ interpretations of their field have increasingly tended toward literalism, while the humanities have tilted towards postmodernism. Thus a kind of stalemate has ensued. Neither side seems inclined to contemplate more nuanced views. It is hard to see ways out of this tunnel, but in the work of the late British anthropologist Mary Douglas I believe we can find a tool for thinking about some of these questions.

On the surface, Douglas’s great book Purity and Danger (1966) would seem to have nothing do with physics.

A thought for today …


Our entire life — consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.
— Jean Anouilh, born on this date in 1910

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Q&A …

… Detectives Beyond Borders: Fred Vargas: The Detectives Beyond Borders interview, Part I.

On Sylvia Plath

Pain, parties, and work...

Without contraries is no progression …

… Writing to Death by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

What I am suggesting is that a novelist’s work is often a strategy (I don’t mean the author need be aware of this) for dealing with some personal dilemma. Not just that the dilemma is “worked out” in the narrative, as critics often tell us, but that the acts of writing and publishing and positioning oneself in the world of literature are all part of an attempt to find a solution, however provisional, to some deep personal unease. In many cases, however hard the writing is pushed, the solution is indeed only temporary or partial, both author and work eventually succumbing. Obviously the easiest group of authors to look at in this regard would be the suicides, Woolf, Pavese, Wallace. But to finish, let’s consider William Faulkner.

The Radical Enlightenment

...according to Jonathan Israel

Fail gloriously...

Wow!

VATICAN COUNTY—Shattering the previous Eucharistic weight record set by Cincinnati’s Sisters of Mercy convent, the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals confirmed Friday it has baked an 800-pound communion wafer, the heaviest ever recorded, for this weekend’s Vatican County Fair. “That there’s the biggest body of Christ under the sun, friend,” said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who personally carved the image of the cross onto the 16-foot-wide wafer. “A full foot thick, batter-dipped, and completely unleavened.” After the colossal host is displayed alongside the fair’s butter sculpture of the Crucifixion and its 450-pound blue-ribbon bishop, each of the 40,000 paying attendees will reportedly receive a piece of the wafer and 32 ounces of wine in a commemorative plastic cup.
 Sorry Frank, couldn't help it.  I'm still laughing.

In case you wondered …

… Grumpy Old Bookman: How to Write a Novel that Works. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

True haunting …

… A Clerk of Oxford: A nun's prayer to her guardian angel.

Long, looping lines …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `A Flourish With His Stick Thus'.

Accurate, but contrary to narrative …

… Best of the Web Today: Meet Col. Williams - WSJ.com.


Perhaps some people do not know that the court-martial is a tool of the commander and not a regular court of law, or that the court-martial panel that convicted Capt. Herrera was not a jury. There are also other critical differences between military tribunals and civilian courts. All of these differences may explain why some have not understood General Helms's actions. But members of Congress familiar with the case should know better.
Except that nowadays, in many cases, members of Congress seem to be as dumb as rocks.

Tilting at windbags …

… Peter Richardson: The Science Delusion - Book Review - Truthdig. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

“In the end,” White claims, “the problem for science is that it doesn’t know what its own discoveries mean.” It isn’t that scientists can’t communicate that meaning, but rather that doing so requires a language of human value that isn’t itself scientific. This is only a problem, of course, when some of them try to forbid all other forms of meaning. 

Hmm …

… How Reading Makes Us More Human - Karen Swallow Prior - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

When I was in college, one of my classes — it was Father Gannon's metaphysics class — had as one of its textbooks, William Luipen's Existential Phenomenology. If memory seves, one of the points made in that book is that one distinctly human characteristics has to do with uselessness. In other words, one of the things that makes us human is our ability to ditch the utilitarian for a while. Ornament an object for no other reason than that it makes it look nicer, not be cause it makes it perform a task better. Does reading require any justification beyond itself? I don't think so.

And The Selfish Gene stunk too...

It is surely rather surprising that we – creatures who are, as [Dawkins] has explained, merely lumbering robots, survival-machines entirely controlled by these super-beings – are, at this stage of our evolution, suddenly free to rise up with one bound and overpower them.
 How Richard Dawkins went further than Hobbes and ended up ludicrously wrong
Dawkin's therefore somehow posits an ability -- free will -- that he would say we have never exercised to date.  Moreover, his entire premise is based on a metaphysical extraction of an emergent property (“selfishness” of a gene) to an organism.  Emergent properties of course are something reductionism of Dawkin's sort would not countenance, yet are the basis for his micro theory and his expansion to macro theory:

Heroic trophy …

… Zealotry of Guerin: The Baleful Head (Edward Burne-Jones).

Captivating and atmospheric …

… The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman | Collected Miscellany.

Criticizing Dan Brown: Is it his lousy writing? Or Something Else?

John Kinsella, a highly regarded Australian poet who teaches at Cambridge, was quoted not long ago in the Times Literary Supplement as saying that he has “not sold his soul to market fetishization.” Kinsella means that he doesn’t want even to think about making a profit from his writing. But Kinsella is also doing what comes naturally for most poets and many literary essayists: He is expressing a disdain for the commercial world. To think about selling books is tantamount to worshipping Mammon.

A thought for today …


The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.
— Graham Greene, born on this date in 1904

Friday, June 21, 2013

Minority report …

… Is Franz Kafka Overrated? - Joseph Epstein - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Kafka, the critic Jeremy Adler holds, is “less dazzling than Proust, less innovative than Joyce, [but his] vision is more stark, more painful, more obviously universal than that of his peers.” Kafka’s universality derives from his high level of generality. Places are not named; most characters go undescribed; landscapes, sere and menacing, appear as they might in nightmares. Joyce and Proust work from detail to generality; Kafka works from generality to detail, giving his fiction the feeling that something deeply significant is going on, if only we could grasp what precisely it is.

So what if it's Friday?

… Issa's Untidy Hut: Eric Burke and Rehn Kovacic: Wednesday Haiku, #120.

Best not jump to conclusions …

… Declining sales of paperbacks: Are e-readers killing the softcover? - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The art of the tweet …

The Ongoing Story: Twitter and Writing : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


Joyce Carol Oates, whom I don’t think of as famously concise but who has become a prolific and often ingenious tweeter, recently tweeted a question: “If an action is not recorded on a smart phone, does it, did it, exist?”

A vanishing Bombay...

The Inquirer will make it, it will, it will

Minor-key world …

… Pride and Perseverance - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


Pym, who started working on her first novel as soon as she finished at Oxford in 1934, was so pleased to be a published writer that she didn’t worry a great deal about receiving mixed reviews. She had a day job editing academic publications, so she didn’t have to live on her royalties. The positive notices appeared often enough to keep her buoyant. Then came the long drought. She was bewildered, humiliated and frustrated, but there was never a break in the writing. She completed two more novels, and filled notebook after notebook with the morsels of daily life she cherished. “MrC in the Library — he is having his lunch, eating a sandwich with a knife and fork, a glass of milk near at hand. Oh why can’t I write about things like that any more — why is this kind of thing no longer acceptable?”

The before and after of fiction...

Richard Dawkins has lost: meet the new new atheists


 Richard Dawkins is now seen by many, even many non-believers, as a joke figure, shaking his fist at sky fairies.

Weird longing...

RIP …

… Johnny Smith, Venerable Jazz Guitarist, Dies at 90 - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The watercourse way …

… Before and after photos: 2012 flood damage, recovery in Duluth, northeast Minnesota | Minnesota in Photos | Minnesota Public Radio News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Sound advice …

… The Miss Marple Book That Shouldn't Be Taken to the Beach | Bill Peschel.

The days of summer …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `Akin to a Paradise'.

Beyond paraphrase …

… Willa Cather: A Hidden Voice by Hermione Lee | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

All of us who have worked and published on Cather, and who have read some of the three thousand or so letters that remain from her life’s correspondence with friends, family, publishers, colleagues, admirers, and fellow writers, had to obey the embargo she left in her will against their publication. As a result, her letters have been paraphrased over and over again by critics and biographers. Her story was told, her secrets were known, but the voice of her letters was not heard.

Concise truths …

 Ronald Blythe is caught out in his gardening clothes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who also sends along Outlandish Proverbs: A Translation.


Monitoring Big Brother …

… Revealed: the top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant | World news | guardian.co.uk.

See also: NSA Secret Warrantless Spying Rules Revealed.


Questions and observations …

… Detectives Beyond Borders: Benjamin Black is history, and so can you. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Mark thy calendar …

… June 30th – F. Omar Telan and Richard Okewole in Fox Chase | Fox Chase Review.

A thought for today …

I considered the case and realized that if something can exist in opinion without existing in reality, or exist in reality without existing in opinion, the conclusion is that of the two parallel lives, only opinion is necessary – not reality, which is only a secondary consideration.
 — Machado de Assis, born on this date in 1839

Installment nation...

Reading with Macfarlane...

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Sycamores …

… Anecdotal Evidence: `The Dry Disease'.

Legal reality …

Can Judges Define The Structure of The Universe? | Religion and Other Curiosities. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I hold no brief for the Schaibles peculiar religious practices, but I think it worth noting that the same court that finds them liable for their child's death would have had no problem with their having terminated said child in utero.

Q & A …

… A Teacher and Her Student | VICE United States. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

After receiving my MFA this May, I left Iowa believing that there’s no good way to be taught how to write, to tell a story. But there is also no denying that Marilynne [Robinson] has made me a better writer. Her demands are deceptively simple: to be true to human consciousness and to honor the complexities of the mind and its memory. Marilynne has said in other interviews that she doesn’t read much contemporary fiction because it would take too much of her time, but I suspect it’s also because she spends a fair amount of her mental resources on her students.

Bad editing …

… Paranormalia: Guerrilla Skeptics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

 It's obvious that sceptics are busily re-editing articles in their favour, and a reader has kindly sent me a link that shows how they do this. It's a project calledGuerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, run by Susan Gerbic, who recruits sceptics to give pages a makeover, both those that publicise their own side (ie debunkers, key sceptic figures, etc) and also the opposition's (celebrity psychics, paranormal claimants, etc).
One looks up something in an encyclopedia in order to find an unbiased account of something. Both sides of a disputed should be given adequate space, but to edit in order to slant matters on way or another is intellectually dishonest. The bane of intellectual life is wedded some people are to their conclusions. Best to regard them as much as one can as provisional. 

Treasure …

… Bodleian Library acquires a classic of environmental literature | MobyLives. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

On second thought …

… Vice Removes Controversial Photo Spread | Observer. (Hat tip, Edward Champion.)

Gauging oneself …

… First Known When Lost: Perspective, Part Nine: "Almost Human".

What's the point?

… Why Study Humanities? What I Tell Engineering Freshmen | Cross-Check, Scientific American Blog Network. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Mystery man …

… Book review: John Kruth’s Roy Orbison biography, ‘Rhapsody in Black’ — The Washington Post.

From C.S. Lewis to Google Glass

That Hideous Strength:
 “The cardinal difficulty,” said MacPhee, “in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, ‘Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.’ The female for this is, ‘Put that in the other one in there.’ And then if you ask them, ‘in where?’ they say, ‘in there, of course.’ There is consequently a phatic hiatus.”  He pronounced this so as to rhyme with "get at us."
"There's your tea now," said Ivy Maggs, "and I’ll go and get you a piece of cake, which is more than you deserve. And when you've had it you can go upstairs and talk about nouns for the rest of the evening." 

"Not about nouns: by means of nouns," said MacPhee, but Mrs. Maggs had already left the room.

Google Glass Needs Phatic Interaction, Stat

A thought for today …

Should a priest reject relativity because it contains no authoritative exposition on the doctrine of the Trinity? Once you realize that the Bible does not purport to be a textbook of science, the old controversy between religion and science vanishes . . . The doctrine of the Trinity is much more abstruse than anything in relativity or quantum mechanics; but, being necessary for salvation, the doctrine is stated in the Bible. If the theory of relativity had also been necessary for salvation, it would have been revealed to Saint Paul or to Moses.
— Georges Lemaitre, who died on this date in 1966

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

RIP …

… Journalist Michael Hastings dies at 33 - U.S. News.

Here's his last article: Why Democrats Love To Spy On Americans.

In case you wondered …

… What's the Origin of "Kilroy Was Here"? | Mental Floss. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Kindred spirits …

… Transmissions from a Lone Star: Kim Jong-Un Declares Admiration for Hitler: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? | Columnists | RIA Novosti.

Looks like beefcake to me …

… San Francisco cheesecake and the Golden Gate Bridge | The Book Haven.

Surprised by immortality …

… Mere C. S. Lewis | TLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


The final chapter of McGrath’s book, entitled “The Lewis Phenomenon”, charts the writer’s posthumous reputation, particularly in the United States. In the 1960s, Lewis almost vanished from view: by the end of the century he had become a cultural icon. Initially, in America, he was read only by Episcopalians, and was upbraided by Evangelicals as a smoker, a drinker and a liberal. But as barriers between mainstream Protestant denominations began to weaken, the author of Mere Christianity began to be admired across the spectrum. Roman Catholics, too, began to link him with G. K. Chesterton and Tolkien, and to consider him a fellow traveller. Most surprisingly, we are told, Lewis has now become the patron saint of American Evangelicalism. In a centenary article in 1998, its flagship periodical, Christianity Today, declared him “the Aquinas, the Augustine and the Aesop of contemporary evangelicalism”. Polls of American Christians, McGrath tells us, regularly cite Mere Christianity as the most influential religious book of the twentieth century.
Well, when I was in Catholic grade school, we read The Screwtape Letters in class and used to pray that Lewis would take the final step to Rome.

Language under duress

 Kenneth Goldsmith is a conceptual poet, a literary trickster whose books are found art of a sort. He mines the mundane. 
...To make “Seven American Deaths and Disasters,” Mr. Goldsmith has combed through archival radio and television broadcasts of painful events over the past six decades: there are chapters about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and John Lennon; the explosion aboard the space shuttle Challenger; the shootings at Columbine High School; the attacks at the World Trade Center; and the death of Michael Jackson — and he has transcribed the reports as they unfurled on the air, live and unmediated.

To Mr. Goldsmith’s detractors this may seem like a cheap stunt, a snort of disaster porn. Or it may seem like proof that, in the author’s case, even a blind and snoutless pig will occasionally find a truffle. At times it made me uneasy.

But Mr. Goldsmith has also delivered a kind of found treasure of the American vernacular. His book is about the sounds our culture makes when the reassuring smooth jazz of much of our broadcast media breaks down, when disc jockeys and news anchors are forced to find words for events that are nearly impossible to describe. This book is about language under duress.

I don't get it.  At all.  And the review, with its excerpts not reprinted here, makes it no clearer.  Alas, perhaps I violate Wittgenstein's dictum: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."  Or the review does.  Or the book does.  Or the original broadcasts do.  Or we all do.

An opinion that counts …

… Ben Franklin Weighs in on the NSA Scandal in the United States | Fox Chase Review.

RIP …

… Minnesota Author Vince Flynn Dies At 47 — CBS Minnesota.

A new axis?

...India's Japan moment
There is another interesting parallel worth noting. There is no doubt that the transformation in India-US relations owed much to the personality of former US president George W Bush. He had a strong affinity for India, and his personal chemistry with Dr Singh helped resolve several apparently insoluble roadblocks during the negotiations on the civil nuclear agreement. In Shinzo Abe, India has a Japanese leader who wears his affection for India on his sleeve. It was Mr Abe who declared in 2007 that ties with India would be the most important relationship for Japan. He has often expressed his respect and admiration for Dr Singh in terms not very different from George Bush. 

Go ahead …

… Go Google Yourself | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


“The Internet,” Molly Haskell wrote, “is democracy’s revenge on democracy.” I take Ms. Haskell to have meant that there are places where democracy has no place, and in those places where it puts forth its snouty nose, disarray is likely to follow. Fifty million Frenchmen, to reverse an old cliché, are frequently wrong. Does this sound elitist? If so, that is only because it adamantly is. Many are the things on which one opinion is not as good as another, and culture is among them. 

Read and listen …

… Claire Messud II (The Bat Segundo Show #504).

Force and form …

… Anecdotal Evidence: "Patterns You Desire to See Again'.

I marketable …

Bryan Appleyard —Stoner: The Greatest Novel You Have Never Read. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Stoner’s lack of success has baffled many. “Why isn’t this book more famous?” asked Snow. Ian McEwan, a recent reader, emails me to say: “I’m amazed a novel this good escaped general attention for so long.” The essayist Geoff Dyer has just read the book on the recommendation of a friend, the novelist and poet Adam Foulds. He thinks the title doesn’t help — it’s the hero’s surname, but nowadays might be taken to mean the book is about a dope-smoker. “Also,” Dyer adds, “it’s such a quiet book, it’s not entirely surprising it didn’t take the publishing world by storm.” Stoner, in short, is unmarketable — always, in my view, a good sign.

No words minced …

… Europe Must Stand Up to American Cyber-Snooping - SPIEGEL ONLINE.

It is embarrassing: Barack Obama will be arriving in Berlin for only the second time, but his visit is coming just as we are learning that the US president is a snoop on a colossal scale. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that she will speak to the president about the surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, and the Berlin Interior Ministry has sent a set of 16 questions to the US Embassy. But Obama need not be afraid. German Interior Minister Hans Peter Friedrich, to be sure, did say: "That's not how you treat friends." But he wasn't referring to the fact that our trans-Atlantic friends were spying on us. Rather, he meant the criticism of that spying.

By the numbers …

Big data meets the Bard - FT.com. (Hat tip,  Dabe Lull.)



Who … would have guessed that, according to a 2011 Harvard study of four per cent (that is, five million) of all the books printed in English, less than half the number of words used are included in dictionaries, the rest being “lexical dark matter”? Or that, as a recent study using the same database carried out by the universities of Bristol, Sheffield and Durham reveals, “American English has become decidedly more ‘emotional’ than British English in the last half-century”?