As a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney, the front-runner in the current race for Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Friedberg’s views on US relations with China and Asia could have some influence if there is a regime change in Washington this November.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
The new rivalry...
...The Golden Stars and Stripes
Friday, March 16, 2012
Hmm …
… Fight your fate - FT.com.
Apart from the fact that the phrase "weird, non-material soul" suggests not much understanding of what the term soul means, the question remains as to how these properties emerged. Given the Big Bang, by the way, it would seem that this whole material world emerged from something non-material.
As Gazzaniga explains with clarity and understated authority, this is based on a false picture of nature operating in a simple “bottom up” way. This kind of crude reductionism has been superseded by an understanding of “complex systems” and “emergent properties”, which gives a scientific explanation of how wholes can be more than the sums of their parts. For example, when atoms get together to form an eagle, the animal has properties such as colour, consciousness and sense perception that do not appear in the list of the properties of atoms. But what’s more, you can’t explain these emergent properties by breaking down the workings of the bird into the workings of atoms. Nor can you build up the other way: you could not predict the properties of birds from the laws of physics and the properties of the atoms that comprise them.
The vital upshot of this is that it is just wrong to think of causation as all occurring at the fundamental, subatomic level of organisation. As an emergent property, conscious thought can affect how we can behave, without us having to postulate some kind of weird, non-material soul. We are built of atoms, but we are neither controlled by them nor control them from the outside. Control is exerted by the whole system, not by its parts or anything external to it.
Apart from the fact that the phrase "weird, non-material soul" suggests not much understanding of what the term soul means, the question remains as to how these properties emerged. Given the Big Bang, by the way, it would seem that this whole material world emerged from something non-material.
The Rutgers debate...
...The Dharun Ravi verdict does little for other Tyler Clementis
In my view, a ten year sentence is too harsh for a "crime" whose contours are unclear to this day. Was Ravi homophobic? We don't know. There are mixed signals from the trial on that. While on the one hand he tried to cover up what he had done, on the other, he had also reached out to Clementi when the latter was alive. Rather than incarcerated, Ravi should be made to do community service for a prolonged period, maybe running into years, and he should work in the area of gay rights.
Departure …
… Rowan Williams resigns as archbishop of Canterbury | UK news | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Bryan tweets that "Rowan embodied something John Gray said after meeting some clergy: 'The church is the last repository of doubt in the modern world.' "
Bryan tweets that "Rowan embodied something John Gray said after meeting some clergy: 'The church is the last repository of doubt in the modern world.' "
Doubt and faith go hand in hand, but Archbishop Williams seems to have had few doubts when it came to politics, an area where doubt is of vast utility. That said, he has always struck me as a genuinely good man, and that covereth a multitude of certainties.
Undercutting oneself …
… David Rieff for Democracy Journal: Democracy No!
This essay open as follows:
This essay open as follows:
I have always thought George Santayana’s celebrated phrase that those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it to be one of the dumbest things ever said by a smart person. It assumes the past repeats itself, which hardly seems likely, and that the past can be understood by posterity as offering simple moral lessons—history as a kind of McGuffey’s Reader writ large—when in fact history is almost never morally binary, but rather bears out Walter Benjamin’s saturnine claim that every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism.
Rieff would have done well, first, to read the quote more carefully, then have found out its context. The quote makes no mention of history. The subject of the sentence is the word past. Here is what Santayana wrote: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” He was talking about progress, not history.
That was as far as I got with Rieff''s piece. If a writer's opening gambit demonstrates that he doesn't know what he's talking about, why continue?
Rutherford B. Hayes backlash …
… Obama’s whopper about Rutherford B. Hayes and the telephone - The Washington Post.
Hayes is dead and buried, but he deserves an apology.Indeed.
Thought for the day …
“It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be.
— Selma Lagerlöf, who died on this date in 1940
Mobocracy …
… Edward Feser: “Reason Rally”: Doubleplusgood newspeak for groupthink! (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
These are the Macaulays of the world — more cocksure of everything than most of us are of anything.
These are the Macaulays of the world — more cocksure of everything than most of us are of anything.
The rise of Islam...
Since the terrorist attacks of September 2001 Islam in America has flourished. The number of mosques has nearly doubled over the past decade, rising from 1,209 in 2000 to 2,106 in 2011, according to a new report from a multi-faith coalition.
The problem with affirmative action...
...Spinning moral compass
The challenge of combating discrimination is complicated. But there is no doubt that despite reservations (or arguably, because of the form they have taken), the texture of social relations between marginalised communities and others is deeply debilitating for marginalised groups, in ways we cannot even imagine. In certain areas, like practices of segregation, the law might help. Assistance to institutions to deal with this form of diversity is absolutely essential. Some programmes have paid dividends. But law, administrative solutions, and reducing justice to a numbers game will only go so far; in fact it can sometimes crowd out and distort the fundamental moral issues. The appalling truth is that there are very few places that the required ethical labour is being done.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Back-story …
… Pulling the podcast plug.
I've been enjoying Writers Gone Wild. I think anybody who likes to read would. A couple of times a week, it's my bedtime reading.
That's too bad about the spammers. I've had a few of those myself. Anyway, get a copy of Writers Gone Wild. It's a fun read.
I've been enjoying Writers Gone Wild. I think anybody who likes to read would. A couple of times a week, it's my bedtime reading.
That's too bad about the spammers. I've had a few of those myself. Anyway, get a copy of Writers Gone Wild. It's a fun read.
Oh, no, not so good after all …
… The Truth About French Parenting (and I Would Know) - Megan McArdle - Health - The Atlantic.
I still think there is at present a class of parents in the U.S. who butt into their kids' lives more than I think is healthy. Of course, when I was a kid, my mother and grandmother — who raised me — were out at work and my brother — who is seven years older than I — was out and about on his own. That meant summer vacation for me was a wonderful period of freedom. My exercise of that freedom would seem bizarrely tame, I suppose — I roamed the woods, read what I felt like, rode into Center City and visited museums on my own (oh, how bold that must seem). I thought and tried to write … and played ball with one friend and I, by slightly revising the rules to allow borrowing, played a marathon 32-hour Monopoly game. Now we'd all be supervised.
I still think there is at present a class of parents in the U.S. who butt into their kids' lives more than I think is healthy. Of course, when I was a kid, my mother and grandmother — who raised me — were out at work and my brother — who is seven years older than I — was out and about on his own. That meant summer vacation for me was a wonderful period of freedom. My exercise of that freedom would seem bizarrely tame, I suppose — I roamed the woods, read what I felt like, rode into Center City and visited museums on my own (oh, how bold that must seem). I thought and tried to write … and played ball with one friend and I, by slightly revising the rules to allow borrowing, played a marathon 32-hour Monopoly game. Now we'd all be supervised.
Paging President Hayes … …
… who would have, apparently, enjoyed being paged: Obama Mangles U.S., World History In Energy Speech | TPM2012.
Surprise , surprise …
… New York Times Accused Of Catholic Bashing, Double Standard On Religion | Fox News.
"… why send your children to parochial schools to be indoctrinated into the next generation of obedient donors and voters?"
Whoever wrote the ad obviously never attended a parochial school. Any number of people who have couldn't wait to demonstrate how original their thinking was by becoming not just ex-Catholics, but Church-bashers to boot. Anyway, given that newspapers are more and more starved for ad revenue, you'd think the Times would want to runs any all such ads.
Pull up a rock …
… and dig in: Research-based cookbook for cavemen and Vikings | ScienceNordic.
The blubber seems rather politically incorrect these days.
Barley-lentil pot with blubber.
The blubber seems rather politically incorrect these days.
Only three gerbils?
… Taking Liberties: Wisconsin Family Set To Lose House Over Dog Ordinance | Fox News.
“They smell. They bark. They have excrement,” explained attorney Jeff Gold, who fully supports laws limiting pets.“You’re not punishing [the Leckers], he explains. “You're regulating society.”
Regulating society? Sorry, Jeff, It's one thing, as Melissa Lecker says, to punish offenders. It's another to "regulate society." Most of us don't want to live in a "regulated" society. We would prefer to live in a free one. The heart of Gold beats to the tune of tyranny.
A must-read, if ever there was one …
… Guernica / A Common Faith. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I could quibble here and there, but that is all it would be — quibbling. Here are some excerpts (fewer than I originally had, because you really should take the time to read the whole thing).
I have recently been reading a lot about contemporary cosmology, in particular about Unconditioned Reality, which is what we refer to when we speak of God. It turns out to be far more mysterious and awe-inspiring than anything any religion has managed to express. Only the mystics have come close, which is one reason they have often run afoul of the arbiters of orthodoxy.
(This post got screwed up by Blogger somehow, so I have reconstructed it as best I could.)
I could quibble here and there, but that is all it would be — quibbling. Here are some excerpts (fewer than I originally had, because you really should take the time to read the whole thing).
It is characteristic of these queries into human nature that everything exceptional about us and about the situation in the world we have created for ourselves is excluded from consideration. It is as if a realistic view of the hummingbird required the exclusion of small size and rapid metabolism, or as if bees could only be understood minus their hives and their interest in pollen. There is actually some reason to worry about this kind of throwaway scientism, however transparently flawed, because versions of it are everywhere and because, whatever else it is, it is almost always presented as learned hypothesis if not outright “information” about our kind, assumptions about human nature presented as if they were objective truth and a reasonable and necessary basis for understanding reality.
“[E]volutionary psychology… tries to explain the features of the human mind in terms of natural selection."The above is from an article in The New York Times Magazine that Robinson quotes. To me, it is literal preposterous (which really means bassackwards). You should derive your theory from the observation of the human mind, not observe the human mind n terms of a theory. As Robinson points out:
If Homo sapiens sapiens is also Homo economicus, why all these deviations from the norm? If self-interest disciplines choice, why is society at every scale shot through with arrangements that seem to inhibit or defeat self-interest? One possible explanation might be that these arrangements actually describe human nature, mingled thing that it is. For this reason they are surely more to be credited as information on the subject than is any abstract theory. But no. There is instead the urge, driven by righteousness and indignation, to conform reality to theory.
What if we were to say that human beings are created in the image of God? It will certainly be objected that we have no secure definitions of major terms. How much do we know about God, after all? How are we to understand this word “created”? In what sense can we be said to share or participate in the divine image, since the Abrahamic traditions are generally of one mind in forbidding the thought that the being of God is resolvable to an image of any kind?
I have recently been reading a lot about contemporary cosmology, in particular about Unconditioned Reality, which is what we refer to when we speak of God. It turns out to be far more mysterious and awe-inspiring than anything any religion has managed to express. Only the mystics have come close, which is one reason they have often run afoul of the arbiters of orthodoxy.
(This post got screwed up by Blogger somehow, so I have reconstructed it as best I could.)
Where do they find these people …
… Dante's Divine Comedy 'offensive and should be banned' - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The only way this sort of thing is ever going to stop is for the people behind it to be subjected to relentless and ruthless ridicule.
The only way this sort of thing is ever going to stop is for the people behind it to be subjected to relentless and ruthless ridicule.
More like anti-creativity...
...Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine Explores Creativity for Capitalists
Too much theorizing and too much focus on neuroscience is killing creativity, IMHO. Do I want to know which hemisphere of my brain lights up when? And what I am supposed to do to achieve success in one kind of art versus another? Thanks but no thanks!
The voice of reason...
...‘I joined the Jihad, and rejected it’
In the West, sadly, there were well-meaning liberals who were reverse racists. In a patronising way, they would try and maintain their romanticised version of what Muslim culture should be, which actually is colonialist. Don’t tell me what my culture should be. If I think, as a Muslim, democracy is compatible with Islam and Muslim majority societies, then I don’t want some wellmeaning liberal to come to me and say it is not compatible with Islam and you are on a losing course. That was what was happening until the Arab uprising.
Thought for the day …
Which death is preferable to every other? "The unexpected".
— Julius Caesar, assassinated on this date in 44 B.C.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Oh, I'm so scared ...
… The Lord’s Army Comes to America’s Public Schools - Katherine Stewart - RichardDawkins.net - RichardDawkins.net. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think Professor Dawkins is going daft. Has he any idea of how many people have gone to religious schools and have ended up rejecting the faith they were instructed in? Why of course he does. He's one of them himself. Evolution forbid that children be taught anything other than what the Prophet Richard and his dutiful acolytes think is appropriate for them. I would simply paraphrase what Brian of Nazareth taught: They can think for themselves. Really.
Temperature rising …
… Scientists use Thoreau's journal notes to track climate change | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A 2.4 degree rise over a century-and-a-half does;t seem all that alarming to me, especially for a world emerging from an ice age.
A 2.4 degree rise over a century-and-a-half does;t seem all that alarming to me, especially for a world emerging from an ice age.
Pursuing her dream …
… A Momentary Taste of Being: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry--Kathleen Flinn.
Having just the other cut my finger very nice and cleanly with a very sharp knife, I can attest to the truth of the title. Not that I came even close to tears. The cut was so clean and quick it hardly hurt at all.
Having just the other cut my finger very nice and cleanly with a very sharp knife, I can attest to the truth of the title. Not that I came even close to tears. The cut was so clean and quick it hardly hurt at all.
Not new …
… but worth a look: LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | The Pump You Pump the Water From. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Writing can’t be planned for or predicted, and when it happens, when the surge begins, it brings a satisfaction like nothing else. There are finer sensualities, sure, and basic emotions that give joy or connection when released, but as far as giving me a sustained sense that this is who I am, this is what I do, a full-fathom immersion in writing is the ultimate verification. Alone at my attic desk, catching the flow of words, when the flow is there to be caught — or generating it when it is there to be generated — I break with my more tentative self, claim some more necessary seeming “I.” The change has everything to do with finding words and their sequence. The joy prolongs itself for a short time after I stop — a resonance, a psychic afterglow — then it tapers away, the other life resumes. But I am already thinking toward the next occasion.
Me, too …
… I Have No Choice but to Own Stocks: 'Black Swan' Author — US Business News - CNBC. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
At my age, I'm supposed to have some bonds, but I've grown wary of them, especially Treasury bonds. Not that I'm even remotely in Taleb's bracket.
At my age, I'm supposed to have some bonds, but I've grown wary of them, especially Treasury bonds. Not that I'm even remotely in Taleb's bracket.
Two views of Coventry …
... A grim & bleak beauty by Anthony Daniels - The New Criterion.
… A trip to the multicultural Midlands.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… A trip to the multicultural Midlands.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Misleading generalization...
...The death of Anil Meena
The author has taken two incidents and made a judgement on "these institutes" presumably institutes of excellence such as IITs, AIIMS and IIMs. It looks like AIIMS may have some problem of caste discrimination, given that an inquiry commission was set up to look into the matter, but the generalisation made by the author is misleading. As an IIM Lucknow student, I can vouch that I have never come across any form of caste discrimination against Dalit students "in class, in hostels, in playgrounds, in messes" (author's words). If anything, I don't think that awareness of students' Dalit identity is high. I, for one, don't recognise any as such.
Though for the day …
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
— Albert Einstein, born on this date in 1879
Ben Lerner
For whatever reason (perhaps it's envy), I rarely read novels written by authors who are my age. Ten or twenty years older, sure. But the way I figure: if we were in college together, I'll take a pass.
In any event, I broke this unspoken rule recently when I read Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station. The book has garnered some significant praise from critics like James Wood and novelists like Jonathan Franzen.
For me, the novel was part Keith Gessen's All the Sad Young Literary Men and part Florien Zeller's Artificial Snow.
I suppose Leaving the Atocha Station - which is book primarily concerned with the torturous process by which art is created, and the subsequent interactions between life and art - was better than Gessen's novel, but not close to Zeller's.
For one, Zeller gets at sex and sexuality in a manner far more organic and convincing than does Lerner. And Zeller also has a way of more seamlessly integrating ideas and philosophies into his work. Still, Lerner is better, I suppose, than Gessen in his ability to mold his self-pity into something interesting (as opposed to something which simply wallows).
So, while I'm impressed by Lerner's book, I'm not selling the farm just yet. That'd be silly: I'm still too young.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Back tomorrow …
I have a long and wearying day. My bum knee (I fractured my right kneecap years ago) has been especially annoying today and walking about seven miles around town did not help. So I'm going to sign off and rest up.
Most interesting ...
… Martin Walser On Kafka, Faith And Atheism.
… the original desire for justification does not include a social component. In Christianity, the idea of mercy through good deeds entered history only during the time of Martin Luther.
But Luther believed in justification by faith alone. It is one of the key points of disagreement between Protestants and Catholics. Catholics adhere to what St. James says in his Epistle: "What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him?"
In this corner ...
… The uses of religion: Comfort, joy and disagreement | The Economist. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The underlying problem is that scientists have cheapened meaning, [Scruton] claims. Our deepest emotions are not mere “adaptations”, “hard wired” in the human cortex; if you reduce people to balls of cells, you wipe away intention, responsibility, freedom and emotion. Instead, the real meaning of existence is located in people’s relationships with each other, the earth and God. The face is his paradigm of meaning, relationship and identity. It is through contemplating the face, the outward form and image of what is inside, that humans see each other as subjects, rather than objects, he says.
I could have told them this ...
... Social networking sites and politics | Pew Internet & American Life Project.
I once spent an entire day responding to a ferocious batch of emails after I was flamed by members of a "progressive" site. I am blessed with an almost sociopathic indifference to that sort of thing, but as it had to do with my job at the time, I felt obliged to respond. It wasn't until one of the emailers communicated to the rest of the horde that, while he didn't agree with me, he had to respect my unfailingly courteous responses that the whole thing suddenly stopped.
I once spent an entire day responding to a ferocious batch of emails after I was flamed by members of a "progressive" site. I am blessed with an almost sociopathic indifference to that sort of thing, but as it had to do with my job at the time, I felt obliged to respond. It wasn't until one of the emailers communicated to the rest of the horde that, while he didn't agree with me, he had to respect my unfailingly courteous responses that the whole thing suddenly stopped.
Yes they can...
...so watch what you post: Can Interviewers Insist on ‘Shoulder Surfing’ Your Facebook Page?
A hedge fund manager worth emulating...
...The billionaire Ray-man who plays by his own rules
BTW, I see nothing creepy in attending the weddings and funerals of subordinates.
BTW, I see nothing creepy in attending the weddings and funerals of subordinates.
Short tale ...
... A Novelist's Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake - Speakeasy - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Happiness comes from... some curious adjustment to life.
— Hugh Walpole, born on this date in 1884
Monday, March 12, 2012
A country on the brink...
... A Ninety-Degree Course Correction
Pakistan being, as Cohen notes, a quintessentially South Asian nation, however strong the pull of West Asia, it is only as a nation that builds its unity on diversity, rather than by imposing unity through uniformity, that it can become a nation with a “national purpose”. Till that happens, it is the Pakistani state that remains the sole guarantor of the continuance of the Pakistani nation.
Owning and being owned ...
... Anecdotal Evidence: `Exceptionally Strong Sentimental Value'.
I suppose the biggest thrill I've had in this regard was sitting with the late Seymour Adelman many years ago in Bryn Mawr College's library leafing through A.E. Housman's notebooks and holding in my hand and reading some of Keats's letters. We arrived there around 1 in the afternoon and when we finally had to leave it seemed as if we had only been there for about an hour. It was actually nearly 6 p.m.
I suppose the biggest thrill I've had in this regard was sitting with the late Seymour Adelman many years ago in Bryn Mawr College's library leafing through A.E. Housman's notebooks and holding in my hand and reading some of Keats's letters. We arrived there around 1 in the afternoon and when we finally had to leave it seemed as if we had only been there for about an hour. It was actually nearly 6 p.m.
Guide for the perplexed ...
... Scandinavian crime fiction: the book | Petrona. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Unusual and affecting ...
... the broken elegy - bookforum.com / current issue. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... The Two Kinds of Decay delivers conventional emotional and narrative satisfactions, each chapter built around an anecdote or observation or topic (steroids, desk calendars, secrets), and the chapters accumulating into a mosaic that feels aesthetically whole. The Guardians, on the other hand, ruminates compulsively on suicide and what Manguso calls “the black box of a forsaken mind.” Her own history of depression and suicidal ideation stands behind the litany of other deaths she offers up. With the writer and performer Spalding Gray’s fatal jump from the Staten Island ferry, Manguso writes, “I’d advanced one lurid death closer to my own.” And after a colleague, a poet, dies from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head, Manguso states: “Afterward I felt an echo of that old feeling—that the line was moving, that I was now one death closer to the threshold—but it was a faint echo. I’ve felt insulated from my death since I began taking this new medicine. I am no longer moved to write poetry, but I traded poetry for a longer life.”
Thought for the day ...
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.
— Jack Kerouac, born on this date in 1922
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The marriage equality debate...
For views and comments, check this page (just scroll down for the comments). Their YouTube page does not allow comments.
My view? I am not sure why gay men would want marriage. In my view, it's what straight people do, and as a gay man, my life and identity are very different from a straight man's, so marriage does not fit in the structure that my life is built on. However, I realize that there is an increasing clamor among a certain section of gay men to have long-term committed relationships and I think there should be provision for that.
Ephemeral knowledge...
...What our textbooks didn’t say
The typical human temperature is not 98.6 degrees. Continental drift is not hogwash although the theory has been refined as plate tectonics. Almost everything Freud said is hooey, and until 30 years ago, no one knew that a large rock from outer space took out the dinosaurs (some people still debate it). “There’s so much knowledge, and it’s growing all the time,” says Joy Hakim, whose science and history books have won educational awards. “We’re in the information age, and you can’t keep up with all of it.”
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