Monday, July 08, 2013
Hate the Artist, Love the Art...
All of this could easily be mischaracterized as a defense of Card, his art, and his politics. It’s nothing of the sort. I find the tone of Card’s essays smug and off-putting, and I vehemently disagree with nearly all of his opinions. His stance on homosexuality—its causes, its social consequences, even its proper status in the Mormon Church—would be laughable if it weren’t insulting and destructive. Nevertheless, I respect and admire Ender’s Game, and I try to judge Card’s books (and his arguments) on the basis of their relative merits. That’s because I believe in a principle—one that distinguishes between an artist’s art and his character, and resists reducing human beings to a political position or a religious faith. It is a difficult principle to embrace: demanding of empathy, suspicious of oversimplification, and inhospitable to righteous anger. But the effort is worth it.As Frank noted a few years ago, Card himself wouldn't necessarily agree.
Rebutting a moron …
… Who’s a journalist? - NYPOST.com.
The ability to publish inexpensively, and to reach potentially millions of people in seconds, has made it possible for people who’d never be able to — or even want to — be hired by the institutional press to nonetheless publish and influence the world, much like 18th century pamphleteers.
Durbin brings to mind something Mark Twain said: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
Getting up close …
… Into the Macro World: Nothing But Flowers | Britannica Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.
— Jean de la Fontaine, born on this date in 1621
Sunday, July 07, 2013
Hmm …
… The Morality of Meditation - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
WHEN a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall. The other two people in the room — who, like the woman on crutches, secretly worked for us — ignored the woman, thus confronting the participant with a moral quandary. Would he act compassionately, giving up his chair for her, or selfishly ignore her plight?
The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.
The question this raises for me is where did they find the participants. I would have reflexively given up my seat, not because I'm such a great guy, but because I was brought up to behave in a certain way.
Wedding gifts …
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Such Sweet and Wholesome Hours'.
Congratulations to the bride and groom and their families.
Congratulations to the bride and groom and their families.
A useful reminder …
… La Bocca della Verità — Natural Science Is Dependent on History. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In case you wondered …
… Readers' Poll: The 10 Worst Bob Dylan Songs Pictures | Rolling Stone. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I rather liked "Gotta Serve Somebody." After all, you do.
I rather liked "Gotta Serve Somebody." After all, you do.
"My Body Stopped Speaking to Me"
Even now it amazes and annoys me: that until the moment Art Cooper told me to write the fucking story, it had never even occurred to me to use in my published work the voice in which I had been speaking to myself for years. That is, it hadn’t occurred to me to publish work…in my own voice. How stupid is that? All this is to say that this story, or rather the editorial injunction that birthed it, taught me that a vivid writing voice is less a matter of talent—far less—than license.
Disconnecting from Techno-Fetishism
So what is really different in our lives as a result of computers? When we stop and think about all of the basic things we do each day the answer is “not much”. Computers have had nothing like the impact on daily life of the industrial revolution and urbanisation, yet we tell ourselves we live in a digital age, one defined by computers.
If it goes well …
… The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.) - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, “Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?” to which Beckett answered, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.”) I am grateful that I have experienced many things — some wonderful, some horrible — and that I have been able to write a dozen books, to receive innumerable letters from friends, colleagues and readers, and to enjoy what Nathaniel Hawthorne called “an intercourse with the world.”
A thought for today …
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
— Robert A. Heinlein, born on this date in 1907
Saturday, July 06, 2013
I'm immune, too …
… When Falls the Coliseum — Graduation blahs.
Of course, I have no sense of nostalgia. Nor am I sentimental.
Of course, I have no sense of nostalgia. Nor am I sentimental.
A thinker worth noting …
… Colin Wilson | Antoni Diller. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I am a long-time admirer of Wilson's work. I think it has been neglected because He is just a thinker recording his thoughts. A freelance thinker in our society is perhaps the ultimate outsider (Wilson's IRS's book, of course, was The Outsider).
I am a long-time admirer of Wilson's work. I think it has been neglected because He is just a thinker recording his thoughts. A freelance thinker in our society is perhaps the ultimate outsider (Wilson's IRS's book, of course, was The Outsider).
Artificial Life?
The last step, from nonlife to life, hasn't yet been completed in the laboratory. But just about everything else in the way of tinkering with life has, and this is the theme of the book's second part.Every so often there are claims we are coming closer and closer to A-life. I suspect they will continue.
Losing my religion...
There is something prim, and as I say, crimped about Eberstadt’s view of the Christian faith. She writes, “The point of being a Christian is to save one’s soul and to get to heaven. Many tests and requirements might be involved along one’s earthly path to that ultimate goal – good works, attendance in church, the practicing of virtues and the resisting of vices, and so.” Not a word about love. This is the neo-con problem, and a large part of the reason for religious decline. The face of Christianity in America is too often a scolding, finger-wagging prelate or minister or, in Eberstadt’s case, intellectual
Old Testament Apocrypha...
Those east European churches then preserved and copied the texts long after they had vanished from other areas. The rediscovery of these apocryphal writings deserves to be counted alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library as one of the scholarly feats of modern times.
A thought for today …
Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
— William Faulkner, who died on this date in 1962
Friday, July 05, 2013
Patronage by bureaucrats …
… What’s Wrong With NEA Literature — Richard Kostelanetz. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Atheists will get that art thing down someday...
June 29th was a bad day for America.On that day, in front of a courthouse in Bradford County, Florida, American Atheists unveiled a monument to atheism. But it was not a bad day because the atheists were allowed to install their monument on government property, or anywhere else. It was a bad day because the monument is so damn ugly.
A thought for today …
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
— Jean Cocteau, born on this date in 1889
July 4, 1939...
"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got.Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?
Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert; also the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow; to have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins; then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology - the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy?
Sure, I'm lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that's something! When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies - that's something.
When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles against her own daughter - that's something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know.
So I close in saying that I might have had a tough break; but I have an awful lot to live for."He began to back away, then remembered his manners and quickly added, "Thank you."
Thursday, July 04, 2013
Anniversary …
The University Bookman: The Conservative Mind at Sixty. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Kirk’s most important book was, as he described it, an analysis of a way of looking at the civil social order, not a set of policy prescription. Unlike many conservatives, Kirk knew cultural stability did not lay in party platforms or Supreme Court opinions, or at least not in those alone. The contributions to our symposium explore how Kirk’s creative re-imagining of a tradition—beginning with the Whig Edmund Burke and ending in Kirk’s volume with the Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot …
Making Updike politically correct …
… A Child's Calendar: John Updike's Vintage Children's Book, Updated to Celebrate Diversity | Brain Pickings. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have nothing against diversity – or for it for that matter. It seems to be nature's way. But I think the best way to "celebrate" it would be to take it for granted. Updating a book to make it conform to your ideological flavor fave strikes me as vulgar.
And Washington today...
If there is an underlying theme, one that Leibovich returns to between parties, it is Team Obama’s transformation from an above-it-all, apolitical wonkfest, at least in self-perception, into just another administration, where conflicts of interest are rife, lobbyists proliferate and outgoing staffers quickly sell out (although no one in Washington sells out anymore; they monetize their government service).
Lincoln in Gettysburg...
That night in Gettysburg, Lincoln stayed in the home of David Wills, a local "eminento" who'd pushed the idea of the national cemetery and helped buy the land. The little town was overrun with visitors. A crowd gathered at Wills's house and called out to Lincoln to speak.
Here we see a nice moment of the egalitarianism and lack of reverence with which 19th-century Americans approached their presidents.
Lincoln came out and said: "I appear before you . . . merely to thank you for the compliment." He would not deliver a speech for "several substantial reasons." One is that he didn't have one. "In my position it is somewhat important that I should not say any foolish things," he added.
"If you can help it," shot a voice from the crowd.
Lincoln said the only way to help it was to say "nothing at all."
About time …
… Austrian Artists Revamp Nazi Poet Memorial – The Arty Semite – Forward.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
A thought for today …
No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, born on this date in 1804
Animal Farm America …
… Perjury By Permission: Clapper Apologizes For False Testimony And The Congress Remains Silent | JONATHAN TURLEY.
… many of the senators who heard that testimony knew it was a lie because they admitted later to knowing about the NSA program to gather data on every citizen. Later, Clapper said that his testimony was “the least untruthful” statement he could make. Yet, of course, that would still make it an untrue statement — which most people call a lie and lawyers call perjury. Indeed, when Roger Clemens was prosecuted for untrue statements before Congress, he was not told of the option to tell the least untrue statement on steroid use.
Marvel of faith …
… Graphic version of the entire Bible planned | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Wednesday, July 03, 2013
How contemporary …
… A Tea Party Thomist: Charles Carroll | Intercollegiate Review.
But scholastic thinkers were also very firm on another matter dear to Carroll’s heart and that of past and present advocates of free markets: monetary stability. They were among the first to identify as unjust the tendency of governments to manipulate currencies for self-interested reasons or to benefit particular groups.
A thought for today …
Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
— Tom Stoppard, born on this date in 1937
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
Essential dignity …
Holy Agony | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I remember seeing the NBC Opera's production of Poulenc's opera some time in the '50s, another example of what a vast wasteland TV was back then. The final scene of the opera is unforgettable.
Fabulous figures, and great Americans …
… The owls of Rice University. (Hat tip, Dave Lull – aka, the OWL)
Hmm …
… Ed Driscoll — Interview: George Gilder on Knowledge and Power. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I get the connection between wealth and power, but if there's one between wealth and knowledge, how come Michael Bloomberg – and a good many others besides – is such an idiot?
I get the connection between wealth and power, but if there's one between wealth and knowledge, how come Michael Bloomberg – and a good many others besides – is such an idiot?
Camel design …
… The American Scholar: Mission Impossible? - Paula Marantz Cohen. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
David Brooks's involvement alone trivializes the enterprise.
Moreover, the commission’s report, with the somewhat arch title, The Heart of the Matter, is itself indicative of the problem. It is not badly written—its grammar and syntax are dutifully correct, and in places it tries to be eloquent. But it was written by a committee. It turns the ineffable into a clear-cut “knowledge base” (a horrid phrase). Consider the goals listed in the report’s introduction: “1) to educate Americans in the knowledge, skills, and understanding they will need to thrive in a twenty-first-century democracy; 2) to foster a society that is innovative, competitive, and strong; and 3) to equip the nation for leadership in an interconnected world. These goals cannot be achieved by science alone.”
David Brooks's involvement alone trivializes the enterprise.
Creative Polymath...
He is obsessed with the 18th century, but it's the English Revolution, rather than the radical fury of the French, that absorbs him. "The British have a hybrid vigor," he explains. "They are best as mongrels. What I find wonderful about our revolution was we still understood the idea of 'extreme example.' We may not have been the greatest creators in Europe, but we were brilliant editors of all the influences, bringing the functional and the beautiful back from Italy to our gardens and interiors, adding our own practical dynamic to French clothes." In Kinmonth's work, this sensibility translates as physicality—a you-are-there immediacy that is almost cinematic in its appeal to the senses.
A thought for today …
There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.
— Herman Hesse, born on this date in 1877
Of Taleb and Medicine and Experts and the Pope
The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.
My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.
However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so.
Nicholson Baker
There's no way around the fact that Nicholson Baker's new book, House of Holes, is, well -- it's a very bad book.
Baker himself calls it a book of raunch. And he's right. There so much sex in here that the whole thing pretty much comes undone.
Unlike Vox, which gave some definition to all that sultry seduction, House of Holes is an adventure in excess: Baker's characters escape to a netherworld of free sex and unlimited arousal. The characters, though, mean nothing: they're little (or in some cases, big) vessels, conscripted for a ride.
It's not that Baker entirely misses the mark: in fact, I think he's on to something here -- namely that we live in a world that's increasingly over-sexed, over-stimulated. Baker is basically acting out pornography's long march toward the mainstream, and the result is a novel that plays on every human arousal, every fetish. (And wow, there are many.)
The problem is that Baker's characters are so hollow that the sex follows suit. So, too, does the language: this is a cheap book, written with clumsy prose that are not at all reminiscent of the precision with which Baker wrote his great book, The Mezzanine.
My hope is that, if Baker again returns to this theme, he does so less with an eye toward arousal, and more toward an eye for the meaning of it all. But then, maybe that's his point: because by the final orgy, I was done with the whole thing.
Monday, July 01, 2013
Mirabile dictu …
… Noam Chomsky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Empty ‘Posturing’ | Open Culture.
I'm no Chomsky fan, but it's hard to disagree with him in this instance.
I'm no Chomsky fan, but it's hard to disagree with him in this instance.
Neglected masterpiece …
… Bruce Charlton's Miscellany: Van Wyck Brooks - The Flowering of New England (1936).
The vast primary scholarship was thus concealed, the style was made varied and vivid, and the book made accessible and appealing to a broad 'middlebrow' audience as well as to academics for whom this was, for a while, the only overview and the first point of reference to several authors.
This is worrisome …
… Bias, bias everywhere | Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
When the man who virtually invented evidence based medicine states that research has become institutionally biased, where can we look? I am not sure.
Bomb squad …
… A Commonplace Blog: 10 worst prize-winning American novels of all time. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… Why It's Good To Be Wrong - Issue 2: Uncertainty - Nautilus. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I'm sure it's good to know that there are limits to knowledge. But It remains unclear to me how that translates into "it's good to be wrong." It's also good to know what you're talking about. Every Catholic knows – or should know – that Papal infallibility is very restricted and has no bearing whatever on something like gravity. Gravity has nothing to do with faith or morals as understood within the context of sacred scripture, sacred tradition, and the sacred magisterium, which form the context within which the pope exercises his authority ex cathedra.
Life in the bleachers …
… A League of My Home | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The boys of summer come and go; I prefer life in the bleachers. A fair number of big leaguers have passed this way, and I follow them in the box scores. Especially Phillies’ stars Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, who were, in successive years, very kind to our daughter during the Muckdogs v. Muckpuppies games. (These tilts required the boys to come to the park the Saturday morn after a Friday night game and presumed revelry. The guys who showed—Utley, Howard, and some very good-natured Latin American players—were saints.)
Loops and circles …
… Rebecca Solnit: California dreaming | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"In creative writing programmes in the US you meet all these 23-year-olds writing their memoirs and I always want to throw some kind of hand grenade made out of experimental prose or force-feed them Orwell and Borges until something more interesting comes out," she says. "Memoirs are odd in that they greatly resemble novels in terms of plot and character, and our lives aren't really very much like novels."
Gettysburg...
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was preparing a final all-out attack on
July 3, 1863, when Cullen "Doc" Aubrey showed up with copies of The
Philadelphia Inquirer.
He couldn't sell them fast enough. Astonishingly, The Inquirer carried
news of the first day's fighting before the outcome of the three-day
battle was known.
"The papers went like gingerbread at the state fair," wrote Aubrey, an
industrious newsboy who later described the response in a book,
Reflections of a Newsboy in the Army of the Potomac.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130701_The_Inquirer_covers_the_battle_-_and_an_unknown_soldier.html#4pxJVTRcdSztyKVS.99
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130701_The_Inquirer_covers_the_battle_-_and_an_unknown_soldier.html#4pxJVTRcdSztyKVS.99
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was preparing a final all-out attack on
July 3, 1863, when Cullen "Doc" Aubrey showed up with copies of The
Philadelphia Inquirer.
He couldn't sell them fast enough. Astonishingly, The Inquirer carried
news of the first day's fighting before the outcome of the three-day
battle was known.
"The papers went like gingerbread at the state fair," wrote Aubrey, an
industrious newsboy who later described the response in a book,
Reflections of a Newsboy in the Army of the Potomac.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130701_The_Inquirer_covers_the_battle_-_and_an_unknown_soldier.html#4pxJVTRcdSztyKVS.99
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130701_The_Inquirer_covers_the_battle_-_and_an_unknown_soldier.html#4pxJVTRcdSztyKVS.99
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was preparing a final all-out attack on
July 3, 1863, when Cullen "Doc" Aubrey showed up with copies of The
Philadelphia Inquirer.
He couldn't sell them fast enough. Astonishingly, The Inquirer carried
news of the first day's fighting before the outcome of the three-day
battle was known.
"The papers went like gingerbread at the state fair," wrote Aubrey, an
industrious newsboy who later described the response in a book,
Reflections of a Newsboy in the Army of the Potomac.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130701_The_Inquirer_covers_the_battle_-_and_an_unknown_soldier.html#4pxJVTRcdSztyKVS.99
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130701_The_Inquirer_covers_the_battle_-_and_an_unknown_soldier.html#4pxJVTRcdSztyKVS.99
See too:Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was preparing a final all-out attack on July 3, 1863, when Cullen "Doc" Aubrey showed up with copies of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He couldn't sell them fast enough.
Astonishingly, The Inquirer carried news of the first day's fighting before the outcome of the three-daybattle was known. "The papers went like gingerbread at the state fair," wrote Aubrey, an industrious newsboy who later described the response in a book, Reflections of a Newsboy in the Army of the Potomac.
When I was young all this fighting in and around Philadelphia, which we learned about, went on field trips to visit, etc. was just so much noise -- much privileged, callow youth that I was. I can't say I have changed in the privileged respect, but I have learned to appreciate, even be stunned, at our forefathers' sacrifice and fight to first create and then sustain this country. As Lincoln said:
We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was preparing a final all-out attack on
July 3, 1863, when Cullen "Doc" Aubrey showed up with copies of The
Philadelphia Inquirer.
He couldn't sell them fast enough. Astonishingly, The Inquirer carried
news of the first day's fighting before the outcome of the three-day
battle was known.
"The papers went like gingerbread at the state fair," wrote Aubrey, an
industrious newsboy who later described the response in a book,
Reflections of a Newsboy in the Army of the Potomac.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130701_The_Inquirer_covers_the_battle_-_and_an_unknown_soldier.html#4pxJVTRcdSztyKVS.99
Amen.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130701_The_Inquirer_covers_the_battle_-_and_an_unknown_soldier.html#4pxJVTRcdSztyKVS.99
An oblique place …
… Anecdotal Evidence: `A Most Disagreeable Sight'.
The essential noe of war, it seems to me, is the fundamental horror of it. That we continue to wage war tells us much about mankind, little of it good.
The essential noe of war, it seems to me, is the fundamental horror of it. That we continue to wage war tells us much about mankind, little of it good.
Getting to know him …
… The University Bookman: The Use and Abuse of Samuel Johnson. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. I think it better to just read the good doctor.
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. I think it better to just read the good doctor.
A thought for today …
Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to a treasure, and not squander on our way through life in the small coin of empty words, or in exact and priggish argument.
— George Sand, born on this date in 1804
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