The Paper: A New Beginning

“There was a period when people […] actually thought that the social movements could sort of takeover. But you may have a green movement which has influence on carbon tax, you may have a campaign for nuclear disarmament which lowers the temperature over the arms race, but you never have an over-all gestalt which can do everything from day care to foreign aid and see it as part of an over-all pattern to change the world. That has to come through politics” (New Yorker, p.68 Larissa MacFarquhar 12/8/08)

“Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules.
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken.”
-Bob Dylan, “Everything is Broken”

A deeply mystical understanding of the universe as fundamentally broken rooted in Kabbalism informs both Walter Benjamin’s essay “On the Concept of History” and Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Slave. A cyclical sense of catastrophic defeat underlies each text. This sense is particularly Jewish in nature, but the sufferings of the Jews serve as a metaphor for the sufferings of the entire world; the Jews have suffered greatly but so has the entire underclass throughout history. Benjamin makes this synechdochal relationship explicit in his essay, which secularizes messianic thinking by applying it to the field of history instead of restricting exclusively to Jewish mysticism. Benjamin wrote his essay in 1940, as the Second World War was just beginning; he saw the rise of National Socialism and died fleeing its advance, a victim of yet another historical catastrophe. Singer’s novel was published in 1962, twenty-some years after Benjamin’s death and the full unfolding of Nazi terrors, which were likely beyond even Benjamin’s profound pessimistic imagination. In The Slave, Singer particularizes Benjamin’s messianic conception of history by setting his narrative firmly in Jewish experience and Jewish history: he uses another catastrophe (the Chmielnicki massacre of 1648) as the starting point for his novel. But this does not diminish or negate the secular broadening of messianic thinking that Benjamin initiated in his essay. Though the historical setting of Singer’s novel recalls the Jewish imperative to remember (Zakhor), its programmatic narrative design suggests that redemption is not to be found solely through Judaism, the Jewish people, or, indeed, any particular ethnic or religious group. Rather, redemption, for both Singer and Benjamin, is a process that, like history itself, is always happening; this is a radical insight that de-emphasizes the importance of apocalyptic thinking, which places redemption, characterized as the concrete realization of an ideal state of existence, at the end of history. Messianic thinking argues, rather, that redemption does not lay at the end of a path called history: it is embedded in history as “splinters of messianic time,” and presents itself as concrete opportunities that interrupt the progression of the broken nature of the universe. Any time an effort is made to repair what has been broken or correct an injustice is redemption realized. That this state of repair never becomes universal or permanent is the great unstated melancholy inherent in both texts. But hope does not entirely leave the picture. Gershom Scholem, the most important modern contributor to messianic literature, was a lifelong friend of Benjamin’s and found his conception of messianism (which Benjamin had evidently formulated much earlier than his essay) very impressive when he heard it as a young man:

In the idea of the messianic kingdom one finds the greatest image of history, on which infinitely profound relationships between religion and ethics are built. Walter said once: The messianic kingdom is always there. This insight contains the greatest truth—but only in a sphere which, to my knowledge, no one since the prophets has attained to. (Lowy, 101-102).

A messianic understanding of history—which is deeply shaped by Jewish mysticism and ethics but retains an essentially secular character—is central to both Benjamin’s essay and Singer’s novel. And the narrative of The Slave reflectively enacts some of the most important elements of Benjamin’s conception of history, often through the use of natural tropes and metaphors.

Having limned the history of messianism in “Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea,” Scholem turns his attention to a more specific instance in “The Messianic Idea in Judaism.” In this essay, Scholem articulates the messianic idea as it presents itself in the work of Benjamin and Singer. Messianism, he stresses, is not “part and parcel of the idea of the [unassisted and continuous] progress of the human race in the universe” (37). The mistaken yoking of messianism to Enlightenment ideas of progress was an early source of grief to Scholem. According to Lowy, Scholem, in reaction to “the fraudulent imitation of the Jewish messianic tradition [perpetrated by] the Neo-Kantian Marburg School,” wrote a scathing rebuke: “The messianic realm and mechanical time have produced, in the heads of the Enlightenment thinkers (Aufklärer), the –bastardized, accursed—idea of Progress […] This is the most pitiful interpretation prophecy ever had to bear” (98). The source of Scholem’s irritation with this linking of messianism to progress lay in his understanding that, for much of Jewish history, messianism was only thought about in “popular imagination” where it didn’t encounter “the opposition of the enlightened part of the community” (38). Here it took on an apocalyptic and utopian character. Redemption was seen variously “as a supernatural miracle involving the gradual illumination of the world by the light of the Messiah” in the Zohar (39); “a spiritual revolution which will uncover the mystic meaning, the ‘true interpretation,’ of the Torah (40); or as an imminent, apocalyptic event presaged by “disasters and frightful afflictions which would terminate history” (41). But in all these iterations of messianism, “the two states of the world [Galut, or the Diaspora, and Redemption] were still separated by a chasm which history could never bridge” (41). It was not until Rabbi Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (known as Ari, “the Lion) created an “extremely subtle and profound interpretation” did Kabbalah and messianism merge into a “unified whole” (42-43). At the heart of Luria’s system, which is fascinating but too complicated to paraphrase here, is the idea that exile, or Galut, is “a terrible and pitiless state permeating and embittering all of Jewish life, but Galut [is] also the condition of the universe as a whole” (43).In other words, the profoundly traumatic events that have historically beset the Jews are not exceptions but the normal course of Jewish history; they are an integral part of being a Jew. And this is also the condition of the entire universe, the entire course of history. Walter Benjamin expresses almost exactly this same sentiment when he writes that “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule” (392).

What I Do (sorta)

Phone Guy - Leveraging RSA Salt from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.

The Paper: Definition of positivism done for now; started on new paragraph framing the debate between positivism and Benjamin's conception of history

Walter Benjamin wrote “Theses on the Concept of History” in 1940, shortly before his failed crossing of the Spanish border at Port Bou in an attempt to escape the Nazi menace in France. In a letter to Theodor Adorno dated February of that year, Benjamin writes that these theses “represent a first attempt at pinning down an aspect of history that must establish an irremediable break between our way of seeing and the survivals of positivism which, in my view, mark out so profoundly even those concepts of history which are, in themselves, closest and most familiar to us” (17, 120 Fire Alarm, quoting Gessammelte Schriften, I, 3, p. 1225). As elsewhere, Benjamin here fails to provide a clear idea of the exact meaning of some key terms, and since these terms inform many of his most important ideas in this essay, a brief consideration of them is in order. In his book The Frankfurt School and its critics (Routledge, 2002), Tom Bottomore laments that “the Frankfurt School thinkers operated with a rather imprecise and variable notion of the object of their criticism” (28). (Though he doesn’t include Benjamin in his study, Bottomore would not have found satisfaction with the manner in which Benjamin uses the term here—or likely with any of Benjamin’s work.) Nevertheless, Bottomore attempts to define the Frankfurt School’s object of criticism for them. Adorno described positivism as “an attitude which not only clings to what is given, but takes a positive view of it” (28, FS). Bottomore’s explanation expands and refines this vague distaste, and in doing so he helps to clarify why Benjamin felt that an “irremediable break” with a positivistic view of history was necessary. Bottomore lists three primary criticisms of positivism:

first, that positivism is an inadequate and misleading approach which does not, and cannot, attain a true conception or understanding of social life; second, that by attending only to what exists it sanctions the present social order, obstructs any radical change, and leads to political quietism; third, that it is intimately connected with, and is indeed a major factor in sustaining, or producing, a new form of domination, namely ‘technocratic domination.’ (28)

Though positivism here refers specifically to a positivistic theory of science—a subject that Adorno and Max Horkheimer attack in The Dialectic of Enlightenment—Benjamin’s concern is with the application of positivism to history. Looking at positivism in relation to history helps to counter Bottomore complaint that “The connection between positivist philosophy of science […] and an acceptance of the status quo” is “asserted rather than argued” by the Frankfurt School (32, FS). When applied to a theory of history the connection gains more force if not a strict logical link. History written from the point of view of those in power is by definition accepting the status quo; and a conception of history as a series of victories does the same. Once history takes a definite, official form—a positivist form—as happens in totalitarian states, it ceases to seriously account for conflicting versions of history. Those who lose the conflicts no longer have a voice and are forgotten to history. For Benjamin, this concern likely had an intense personal connection: if the forces of fascism triumphed, how would history remember him? Such were the stakes of the argument for Benjamin. Though it is rarely mentioned explicitly, positivism lurks over Benjamin’s text, always attempting to smother its truths. A comparison of positivism to Marx’s communist specter is tempting, but a more accurate analogy would invoke Marx’s vampiric capitalism—both are insidious and broadly entrenched systems of thought and action that contribute to a degradation of human existence. And for Benjamin, positivism outstrips even capitalism in its malice because positivism undergirds the philosophies that sustain capitalism and—more pressing to Benjamin—fascism. Thus, it was imperative that Benjamin “establish an irremediable break” from such a threatening philosophy of history. Exactly how constructing an alternate conception of history fights against the menace of positivism and fascism (the two are nearly conflated) will be discussed in more detail below.

As Michael Lowy points out in his book Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History”, Benjamin considered this essay “a first attempt”: “the document was not intended for publication” (17). He circulated the text amongst trusted friends like Adorno and Hannah Arendt, but, Lowy writes, he feared publication “‘would throw wide open the doors to enthusiastic incomprehension’” (17). So Benjamin was aware that the style, terminology and references would be opaque to most readers, and it is perhaps read in the light of this knowledge, or at least the understanding that, as his letter to Adorno suggests, he is working in a fully allusive and dialectical mode. He wants to “pin down an aspect of history” that will provide a break with the positivistic “status quo” yet is, at the same time, close and familiar. His aim itself is dialectic and prefigures the dialectical study of history he puts forth in the essay, the past “flitting” by must be seized by the historical materialist. This essay is the means by which he hopes to effect not only that break between competing viewpoints but within history itself.

History is indeed a struggle, but not one that is won strictly through empirical means. Using the metaphor of a chess-playing automaton that secretly utilizes a “hunchbacked dwarf” to control the puppet, Benjamin suggests that a victory attained strictly through empirical means is not possible. “Historical materialism” might be the apparatus but “theology, which […] is small and ugly and has to keep out of sight” is the engine (“Concept” SW 4, 389). Benjamin is not advocating a revolution driven by religion. Rather, he is framing the conflict between a positivistic conception of history and his own conception of it. The struggle might a “class struggle,” but “the fight for the crude and material things” is only a first step toward refashioning history (“Concept” 390). Material things and changes are necessary but “confidence, courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude” fuel the struggle (“Concept” 390). In other words, history, or any conception of history that would contribute to a meaningful role in the class struggle, needs to take into account things that are not known. Such a conception of history needs to be diametrically opposed to a positivistic conception of history. Benjamin employs a botanical metaphor to illustrate this point: “As flowers turn toward the sun, what has been strives to turn—by dint of a secret heliotropism—toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history” (“Concept” 390). History tends toward the unknown; it turns away from the known past—the past that is chronicled by the victors.

Historical events have determined Jacob’s situation at the outset of the novel and, in this sense, made him a victim of history. But his understanding of his situation forms through his relation to the natural world. He remembers that “the Cossacks had advanced on Josefov,” his hometown, when he was only twenty-five, but he understands where he is now because of the seasons: “here it was the end of summer; the short days, the cold nights had come” (54). The referents with which he marks his past indicate a profound shift in his fundamental understanding of time. Whereas before he was able to measure the past by changes to his social and cultural world, now he had to measure time by the changes in nature. It’s true that the cycle of life—seen so much more clearly and easily in nature—could be said to recur in a small shtetl town as well, the changes have a human front, a personality and elemental humanity that’s hard to shake as eternally revolving, as opposed to the faceless façade of nature. Individual trees may vary, but their differences are not so easily noted as they are in the lined and aged face of a grandmother. Grandmothers may look alike across time and geography, but absent the technology of reproduction, the aura of the person claims a place above anonymous and hidden nature. History, measured against nature, becomes soulless and entirely divorced from the divine residing in the faces of loved ones. The conception of nature would change as well as the perception of it, which could be said to be whatever concrete element against which the subject measures time. If this concrete referent shifts from the personal (that is, the family: the known, the loved) to nature, which is largely a mystery, then it is no wonder that an understanding of the universe and moral conceptions would shift from the religious to the secular—but still retain the ethical element. In other words, religion becomes stripped of theology. Instead of worrying about the nature of God, Jacob begins to worry about the nature of Jacob, and how this nature affects others. God no longer judges Jacob’s actions; he judges his actions against his ideal, God. His religion becomes the pursuit of the ethical, not the face of g-d. This is not a matter of simple-mindedness. Jacob knew the ideas of “Plato, Aristotle, and the Epicureans” and “sought to understand wherever it was possible” (54). Even before the massacre occurred, it was feared in his community: “Hearts had long been frozen with fear, then one day death had struck” (54). Deracinated and cut off from his studies, his homeland and his family, Jacob inhabits a position analogous to our experience of history (or Benjamin’s famous angel of history). For him, the past has no physical manifestation. If he had been able to stay in his village, the buildings and the people and the land would inhabit and reflect the past. The time passed could be marked in people’s faces, the wear of buildings, and the familiar growing gradually older.

Jacob had just turned twenty-five when the Cossacks had advanced on Josefov [his hometown]. He was now past twenty-nine, so he had lived a seventh of his life in this remote mountain village, deprived of family and community, separated from books, like one of those souls who wander naked in Tophet. And here it was the end of summer; the short days, the cold nights had come. He could reach out his hands and actually touch the darkness of Egypt, the void from which God’s face was absent. Dejection is only one small step from denial. Satan had become arrogant and spoke to Jacob insolently “There is no God. There is no world beyond this one.” He bid Jacob become a pagan among the pagansl he commanded him to marry Wanda or at the very least to lie with her. (54)

The Paper: Revised 1st Paragrpah for Benjamin section, a more earnest attempt at defining postivism

Walter Benjamin wrote “Theses on the Concept of History” in 1940, shortly before his failed crossing of the Spanish border at Port Bou in an attempt to escape the Nazi menace in France. In a letter to Theodor Adorno dated February of that year, Benjamin writes that these theses “represent a first attempt at pinning down an aspect of history that must establish an irremediable break between our way of seeing and the survivals of positivism which, in my view, mark out so profoundly even those concepts of history which are, in themselves, closest and most familiar to us” (17, 120 Fire Alarm, quoting Gessammelte Schriften, I, 3, p. 1225). As elsewhere, Benjamin here fails to provide a clear idea of the exact meaning of some of his terms. Since these terms inform many of his ideas in the essay, a brief consideration of them is in order. In his book The Frankfurt School and its critics (Routledge, 2002), Tom Bottomore laments that “the Frankfurt School thinkers operated with a rather imprecise and variable notion of the object of their criticism” (28). (Though he doesn’t include Benjamin in his study, Bottomore would not have found satisfaction with the manner in which Benjamin uses the term here—or likely with any of Benjamin’s work.) Nevertheless, he attempts to define that object for them. Adorno described positivism as “an attitude which not only clings to what is given, but takes a positive view of it” (28, FS). Bottomore expands and refines this distaste for the acceptance of the status quo and a refusal to think beyond the empirical, and in doing so helps to clarify why Benjamin felt that an “irremediable break” with a positivistic view of history was necessary. Bottomore lists three primary criticisms:

first, that positivism is an inadequate and misleading approach which does not, and cannot, attain a true conception or understanding of social life; second, that by attending only to what exists it sanctions the present social order, obstructs any radical change, and leads to political quietism; third, that it is intimately connected with, and is indeed a major factor in sustaining, or producing, a new form of domination, namely ‘technocratic domination.’ (28)

Though positivism here refers specifically to a positivistic theory of science, a subject that Adorno and Max Horkheimer attack in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Benjamin’s concern is with the application of positivism to history. Bottomore complains that “The connection between positivist philosophy of science […] and an acceptance of the status quo” is “asserted rather than argued” (32, FS). When applied to a theory of history, however, the connection gains more force if not a strict logical link. History written from the point of view of those in power is by definition accepting the status quo; and a conception of history as a series of victories does the same. Once history takes a definite, logical and official form—a positivist form—it ceases to account for any possible conflicting conceptions of history. Those who lost the conflicts to the victors no longer have a voice in history and are forgotten. For Benjamin, this concern likely had an intense personal connection: if the forces of fascism triumphed, how would history remember him?

The Paper: Paragraph 1, Benjamin Section, 1st Draft

Walter Benjamin wrote “Theses on the Concept of History” in 1940, shortly before his failed crossing of the Spanish border at Port Bou in an attempt to escape the Nazi menace in France. In a letter to Theodor Adorno dated February of that year, Benjamin writes that the theses “represent a first attempt at pinning down an aspect of history that must establish an irremediable break between our way of seeing and the survivals of positivism which, in my view, mark out so profoundly even those concepts of history which are, in themselves, closest and most familiar to us” (17, 120 Fire Alarm, quoting Gessammelte Schriften, I, 3, p. 1225). In his book The Frankfurt School and its critics (Routledge, 2002), Tom Bottomore laments the imprecision with which the Frankfurt School and its associates used the term “positivism”: “the Frankfurt School thinkers operated with a rather imprecise and variable notion of the object of their criticism” (28). “The connection between positivist philosophy of science,” writes Bottomore, “[…] and an acceptance of the status quo” is “asserted rather than argued” (32, FS). Though he doesn’t include Benjamin in his study, Bottomore would not have found satisfaction with the manner in which Benjamin uses the term here (or likely any of Benjamin’s work). However, it is worth considering Benjamin’s stated aim in more detail. First of all, as Michael Lowy points out in his book Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History”, Benjamin considered this essay “a first attempt: “the document was not intended for publication” (17). He circulated the text amongst trusted friends like Adorno and Hannah Arendt, but, Lowy writers, he feared publication “‘would throw wide open the doors to enthusiastic incomprehension’” (17). So Benjamin was aware that the style, terminology and references would be opaque to most readers, and it is perhaps read in the light of this knowledge, or at least the understanding that, as his letter to Adorno suggests, he is working in a fully allusive and dialectical mode. He wants to “pin down an aspect of history” that will provide a break with the positivistic “status quo” yet is, at the same time, close and familiar. His aim itself is dialectic and prefigures the dialectical study of history he puts forth in the essay, the past “flitting” by must be seized by the historical materialist. This essay is the means by which he hopes to effect not only that break between competing viewpoints but within history itself.

The Arc of History

"Bending the arc of history" is a strange metaphor and phrase. Just saying.

Ring Them Bells

Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams,
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
Cross the valleys and streams,
For they're deep and they're wide
And the world's on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride.

Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow,
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know.
Oh it's rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow.

Ring them bells Sweet Martha,
For the poor man's son,
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one.
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep.

Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf,
Ring them bells for all of us who are left,
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through.
Ring them bells, for the time that flies,
For the child that cries
When innocence dies.

Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the top of the room,
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom.
Oh the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they're breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong.

-Bob Dylan, "Ring Them Bells"

Here's a link to a slightly embarrassing version of this song, performed live in 1994 at something called the Great Music Experience. Don't click if grand orchestrations make you cringe. In that case, just look at those last two lines. It was hard to find something that matched this mood of happiness toward the world, but that last couplet comes close to expressing it. Not there yet. Hardly. But some kind of process of shrinking that distance, however temporary and fragile, and perhaps ultimately futile, has begun. For the moment, though, that even a gesture toward this reconciliation has occurred is somewhat hard to believe. It's enough to just express it right now.

Happiness and Redemption:

"There is happiness--such as could arouse envy in us--only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, the idea of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the idea of redemption. The same applies to the idea of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to redemption. Doesn't a breath of the air that pervaded earlier days caress us as well? In the voices we hear, isn't there an echo of silent ones? Don't the women we court have sisters they no longer recognize? If so, then there is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Then our coming was expected on earth. Then, like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power on which the past has a claim. Such a claim cannot be settled cheaply. The historical materialist is aware of this."

-Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History"

Everything is Better Now

Good job, America!

grody

From the Weekly Review, by Harper's:

a 27-year-old woman was arrested for shoplifting from a Walgreens in Florida and for brandishing, according to the arrest affidavit, “a well-used and bloody female sanitary napkin.” “I delivered a firm, lawful command to the suspect to drop the object,” stated one of the officers, “and told her it was gross.”

Carrie Brownstein: Funny

Inspired by the news that The Beegees'"Staying Alive" has the perfect beat for CPR, the multi-talented Ms. Brownstein offers some other songs that can save your life in certain situations:

2. Cougar or Bear Attack

When confronted by a bear or cougar while hiking, camping or mountain-biking, don't leave your survival up to chance. We all know that freezing, making yourself look bigger, maintaining eye contact and backing away slowly are the correct survival methods in this situation. But most people decide, wrongly, to run. However, many survivors of bear and cougar attacks have one thing in common: They all reported humming the tune "Suite: Judy Blues Eyes" by Crosby, Stills & Nash. It helps to hum the tune out loud, but only the end. (Yes, the "do do do do do DO DO do do do do" part.) When the bear or cougar retreats in response to this life-affirming melody, Crosby, Stills, Nash & You have won.

She also explains what songs to sing/hum/listen to in the event of choking ("War"), fire ("A Horse with No Name"), shuttlecock-retrieval-related falling ("Baby Got Back"), and joke-performance asphyxiation in a dry-cleaning bag ("A Case of You").

Cassidy on Soros on the Economic Meltdown

John Cassidy's review of George Soros's new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means, is one of the most lucid and illuminating accounts of these nearly incomprehensible times. Cassidy not only explains the origin of all the things you've been hearing about in the news, he explains the very basic foundations of the modern financial system in a way that someone who garnered D's in math and can't balance a checkbook can understand. It's long, but it's worth it.

He mainly argues that George Soros understands, and explains in his book, that markets can behave irrationally. They do not always operate according to strict theories or rationality imposed upon them by economists who use computer models to make predictions.

Financial markets perform two essential roles in the economy: (1) they take money from those with no immediate use for it, such as people saving for retirement and the hereditary rich, and put it into the hands of firms and entrepreneurial individuals with productive investment ideas but a shortage of cash to finance them; (2) they allow individuals and institutions to reapportion risk to those more willing to bear it. If Wall Street didn't exist, another method of allocating savings and risks would have to be found. One alternative is diktat, but the history of the Soviet Union and other Communist countries amply demonstrated the difficulties involved in centralizing economic decisions.

The great advantage of a market system is that it draws on information from throughout the economy and translates it into public signals—prices—that investors and firms can react to. Earlier this year, investors woke up to the fact that Detroit had ignored the threat of dwindling oil stocks and had bet its future on gas-guzzling SUVs: the stock prices of American car companies plummeted, making it much more expensive for them to sell equity in their corporations. Toyota and Honda, which had invested heavily in smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, have seen their stocks hold up much better, enabling them to raise funds cheaply. Nobody planned it, but in this instance the market rewarded foresight and innovation.

For financial markets to allocate resources to their most productive uses on an ongoing basis, the price signals they send must be the right ones day after day after day. Is this a realistic goal? A typical investor following the Dow's gyrations on CNBC or Yahoo Finance might be tempted to say no, but then the typical investor doesn't have the benefit of an economics Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Soros's theory of "reflexivity" is especially interesting and Cassidy even made up a helpful little diagram, but this isn't, unfortunately, in the online version of the article.

Reason, Farewell

The cold, gnawing emptiness inside gets a little worse:

In the latest instance of inflammatory outbursts at McCain-Palin rallies, a crowd member screamed "treason!" during an event on Tuesday after Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of criticizing U.S. troops.

"[Obama] said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are 'air raiding villages and killing civilians,'" Palin said, mischaracterizing a 2007 remark by Obama. "I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women in uniform are doing in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is fighting terrorism and protecting us and protecting our freedom."

Shortly afterward, a male member of the crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, yelled "treason!" loudly enough to be picked up by television microphones.

(via AS)

Fight the Press

This is terrible:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

(via Andrew Sullivan)

ill-conceived

Had the aim been to attract much traffic with a clever gimmick, this is the blog you would be reading now. Yet, do not infer great amounts of rancor nor bitterness. A good idea is a good idea. And those pictures are hard to hate.

(via BuzzFeed)

Colbert at The New Yorker Festival

Zachary Kanin has put up quite the amusing post about Stephen Colbert's appearance The New Yorker festival. Colbert evidently covered a lot of ground:

On the philosophical implication of running for President: “We cast the show into the puddle of reality, and reported on our own ripples.”

On being kicked out of the Presidential election: “They tell you when you’re a child that anyone can run for President. But apparently not you, Stephen Colbert.”

On what he will do to an audience member’s friend who is an intern at “The Colbert Report”: “I will grope him.”

"I put sometimes the cartoons in the bookstore in the window."

The New Yorker had some kind of festival recently and they posted some mini-profiles of people who attended. Wilfred Merkel, 65, of Germany seems quite the charming man; he's the one that, when asked what section of the magazine he reads first, said that he puts "sometimes the cartoons in the bookstore in the window." To the question of which contributor to the magazine he'd like to sit next to on a long plane ride, he answered "I would like to find the magazine on board the airplane!" It's fortunate that Mr. Merkel's charm ends the slideshow because immediately preceding him is an attendee who evokes more ambivalent feelings.

Palin, Poet

"Challenge to a Cynic"

You are a cynic.
Because show me where
I have ever said
That there's absolute proof
That nothing that man
Has ever conducted
Or engaged in,
Has had any effect,
Or no effect,
On climate change.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)


"On Reporters"

It's funny that
A comment like that
Was kinda made to,
I don't know,
You know ...

Reporters.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

(via cf, original source here)

Harry Belafonte and DNC '68

(via BB)

“I didn’t know you were Catholic”

This is some weird shit going down.

In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”

Foreign Relations

(via BB)

Capitalism is The Worst Enemy of Humanity (Mostly)

On Wednesday, Evo Morales addressed the United Nations General Assembly. He denounced capitalism in no uncertain terms:

"What we are talking about is the fight between rich and poor, between socialism and capitalism," Bolivian President Evo Morales said late in the day. "This historic fight is being repeated now. There is an uprising against an economic model, a capitalistic system that is the worst enemy of humanity."

Meanwhile, perhaps his closest ally in South America (no, not Zapatero!), Hugo Chavez, "signed a series of energy co-operation deals with China." Chavez explained humbly, "While the world enters an energy crisis, we are investing." His next stop is Russia, with whom he "has signed arms contracts [...] worth more than $4bn."

Much Clearer

Sasha Frere-Jones explains the credit crisis:

when I arrived at the bank this morning, I discovered that my account had been “compromised.” Apparently, someone at the bank who never had any business touching my money in the first place lent it to someone with no money of their own who promised to give my bank even more money that nobody ever really had. This process, surprisingly, made everyone involved nervous, so they closed down the banks—and “firms,” which are sort of like your company, I think?—and went out for Cinnabons, which I have to pay for. Nobody knows where my money is.

This also might be the explanation for something else, but it's all equally confusing, so why not just go with it?

Dock Ellis

In 1970, Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the San Diego Padres. In 1984, he claimed that he was high on LSD during the game and hardly recalls it:

I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me.

Barbara Manning and the SF Seals (awesome name, no?) wrote a song about the game, which, along with a cool drawing and some more information about Dock Ellis, can be found here.

(via a convoluted path too complicated to attribute, but here are the Wikipedia pages for Dock Ellis and Barbara Manning. Trippy picture via The Psychedelic Shakespeare Solution.)

what about a trunk?

The complete list of packaging options when sending an international package via FedEx:

Bag
Barrel
Basket or Hamper
Box
Bucket
Bundle
Cage
Carton
Case
Chest
Container
Crate
Cylinder
Drum
Envelope
Package
Pail
Pallet
Parcel
Pieces
Reel
Roll
Sack
Shrink Wrapped
Skid
Tank
Tote Bin
Tube
Unit
Other Packaging

Ricky Gervais Inspires Scientists

No doubt inspired by repeated Ghost Town commercials, British scientists have decided to study near-death experiences. Rachel Stevenson of the Guardian reports:

Researchers are setting up shelves above patients' beds on which a number of pictures will be put that can only be seen from above the ground.

Patients will then be asked to recall any memories from the time of their cardiac arrest. If they can describe the pictures on the shelves, the scientists will have some proof of whether or not these out-of-body experiences are real, or just illusionary dreams.

The BBC has an article about the same story here.

prescience

In 1936 Walter Benjamin wrote the second version of what has become his most well-known essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility" (some versions use "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"). In a footnote for a section considering how film alienates the actor from his own image by taking his image to another site "in front of the masses," Benjamin begins to apply this same idea to the politician. The "mode of exhibition" that film offers, he argues, affects politicians by replacing their traditional "public," the parliament, with the masses. The politician no longer knows exactly to whom he is speaking, and it could be an infinite number of people. He goes on:

This means that priority is given to presenting the politician before the recording equipment [...] Radio and film are changing not only the function of the professional actor, but, equally, the function of those who, like the politician, present themselves before the media. The direction of this change is the same for the film actor and the politician, regardless of their different tasks. It tends toward the exhibition of controllable, transferable skills under certain social conditions, just as sports first called for such exhibition under certain natural conditions. This results in a new form of selection--selection before an apparatus--from which the champion, the star, and the dictator emerge as victors.

(Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility." p.128 Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Vol. 3, 1935-1938. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2002.)

worth its weight

Maybe people should say "x is worth its weight in LSD" instead of gold:

If we look at good-quality 1 carat diamonds, we find that they are quite expensive compared to the industrial diamonds we saw earlier. Now, the diamond monopoly hasn't kept prices quite as high as LSD, however they are doing a very impressive job of trying. LSD doses measure in the micrograms, which makes the per-pound "street value" of the stuff astronomically high.

And those LZR swimsuits?

People have been saying that the new industrial grade swimsuits like the LZR Racer are worth their weight in gold. As you can see, this is clearly inaccurate. But such a suit is worth its weight in marijuana or industrial diamonds.

More fun here. (via BB)

Israeli girls in the army

These photos are well-worth checking out (if the link starts working again).

(via clusterflock and BB)

person no more

In the synopsis for the headline "Michelle Obama, Reluctant No More" the New York Times employs a terrible neologistic phrase (italics added):

Michelle Obama is at the center of what may be the most closely managed spousal rollout in history.

The Replacements, "Here Comes a Regular"

Well, a person can work up a mean mean thirst
After a hard day of nothin' much at all
Summer's past, it's too late to cut the grass
There ain't much to rake anyway in the fall

And sometimes I just ain't in the mood
To take my place in back with the loudmouths
You're like a picture on a fridge that's never stocked with food
I used to live at home, now I stay at the house

And everybody wants to be special here
They call your name out loud and clear
Here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one here today?

Well a drinking buddy that's bound to another town
Once the police made you go away
And even if you're in the arms of someone's baby now
I drink a great big whiskey to you anyway
And everybody wants to be someone's here
Someone's gonna show up never fear

Here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one who feels ashamed?

Kneeling alongside old sad eyes,
He says "Opportunity knocks once then the door slams shut"
All I know is that I'm sick of everything that my money can buy
A fool who'll waste his life, God rest his guts

First the lights, then the collar goes up, and the wind begins to blow
You turn your back on a pay-you-back last call
First the plants, then the leaves and at last here comes the snow
Ain't much to rake anyway in the fall

over

More sad, post-Olympics photos--taken just twelve hours after the closing ceremonies--can be found here.

(via James Fallows)

the beauty of translation

From the New York Times article about Estonian discus gold-medalist, Gerd Kanter:

“For a cracker, the wind was too strong,” he said. “If there was no wind I could probably add a couple of meters. Now it comes backward.”

particularly the Brazilians

The Guardian reports that Father Antonio Rungi, an Italian priest, will host an online nun beauty pageant to prove that not all nuns are, in his words, "elderly, straitlaced and funereal." He goes on to say that "It's no longer that way these days. There are nuns from Africa and Latin America who are really very, very lovely. The Brazilians, particularly." The contestants

will be able to give voters - that is, anyone visiting Rungi's site - an idea of their personalities. Aspirants to the title of Sister Italy will also be expected to reveal something of their "lives and miracles". Contestants can decide whether they appear in wimples.

table turning*

Everything was going so well in this sweet New York Times story about "tattooed bikers" who rescue animals from abusive caretakers until this sneaked in:

The group was joined by a man from the Humane Society and an investor from Canada, a tall, slim figure with gelled hair who saw Rescue Ink on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in May and flew down from Vancouver to ride along and talk about branding.

The presence of investors and "branding" lends everything else the sour taste of cynical marketing ploys and the ugly, morally decrepit mechanisms of capitalism; the insatiable desire to reduce--in the interest of reducing costs and raising profits--complexity to the greatest degree of singular, universally recognizable graphic simplicity.

*From Karl Marx, "The Fetishism of commodities and the Secret thereof":

The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was.

seriously, no joke, watch your step

Those "tech-artist" protesters who were detained by the Chinese received a ten-day jail sentence, according to Boing Boing. This doesn't exactly burnish China's free-speech credentials, but, on the other hand, anyone identified as a "tech-artist/student/protester/activist" is probably young, healthy and of at least middle-class origins (also likely annoying). A ten-day stint in a jail surely isn't pleasant for anyone, but it seems like they will get out and probably have a solid support system at home. They can blog/twitter/facebook/myspace and otherwise relate their experience and express their righteous discontent.

But now, reports Deadspin and the New York Times, China has arrested two septuagenarians and sent them to "re-education" camps. No one is happy about this:

The two women, both in their late 70s, have never spoken out against China’s authoritarian government. Both walk with the help of a cane, and Ms. Wang is blind in one eye. Their grievance, receiving insufficient compensation when their homes were seized for redevelopment, is perhaps the most common complaint among Chinese displaced during the country’s long streak of fast economic growth.

But the Beijing police still sentenced the two women to an extrajudicial term of “re-education through labor” this week for applying to hold a legal protest in a designated area in Beijing, where officials promised that Chinese could hold demonstrations during the Olympic Games.

fight and study

A recent BBC article about the ultra-Orthodox Haredim Jews of Jerusalem yields some interesting facts about this community. For instance, because they study at seminaries, the men are exempt from military service:

"It's an ancient concept in Judaism that the spiritual and the physical are united, that to win a war you need both spirit and strength," says Moshe Eliahu, a Haredi father of two and full-time student at a Jerusalem seminary.

"You need people fighting, but you also need people learning and praying."

According to government figures, the majority of Haredi men do not have paid jobs.

The Haredim take studying very seriously:

Mr Eliahu says Israel and the world need the "positive energy" that comes from learning Torah.

"This sounds funny to the western ear - what can a man learning in a yeshiva all day possibly give back to the world?" he says. "Torah learning that we do is the hidden code of the physical existence of all mankind, and if for one single second there is no Torah learning in the air, all the world would go back to chaos."

Mr Eliahu's wife, Miriam, teaches English at two Jerusalem schools and takes care of their children. "There's no point to our physical existence without a spiritual purpose, and I, as the husband who is learning all day, am primarily responsible for that," he explains.

But they still value women:

He also rejects the view that Haredi gender roles are primitive. In Judaism, he says, women are actually considered to be closer to God than men. ''They are the ones who create life, they are the queens."

better watch your step

A blog called Stryde Hax has done a very thorough job of looking into the whole He Kexin age controversy using "only publicly available, primary, linkable information." The results suggest that she is fourteen and that, possibly, Google has cooperated actively or passively with the Chinese government in hiding this fact.

From the post:

Much of the coverage regarding Kexin's age has only mentioned "allegations" of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state, directly available from China by clicking on the links above rise to a level of evidence higher than "allegation". The following points bear mentioning:

1. Google's cached copy of the spreadsheet does not contain Kexin's age record, and Baidu's does. This does not necessarily imply that Google allowed its data to be rewritten by Chinese censors, but the possibility does present itself.
2. From the minute I pressed the publish button on this blog, the clock is ticking until Kexin's true age is wiped out of the Baidu cache forever. It is up to you, the folks reading this blog, to take your own screenshots and notarize them by publishing them. If you put a link in the comments section, I'll post it.

However, this is minor compared to some other totalitarian moves the Chinese government has been pulling. The government has detained several "tech-art" activists for an attempted LED-based protest, which BoingBoing has been following closely.

More stories of attempted protests and arrests can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.

(gymnast age post via Deadspin)

suburbs

Merlin Mann can really nail it in 140 characters or less sometimes:

The American suburb is ideally suited to driving alone and being a little sad about things you haven't bought yet.

people complain too much

toothpastefordinner.com

stupid questions

You shouldn't feel bad if you missed all those debates between Obama and Clinton. Scott Horton at Harper's explains, using a memo generated by the Clinton campaign, that those debates contained literally zero substance:

As the authors noted in reviewing some 352 questions asked in 17 debates that involved Hillary Clinton in the 2008 campaign through January, not a single question was asked about the actual operation of the machinery of government.

Almost all the questions that the candidates fielded were either "puff" or "gotcha" questions. Horton provides perhaps the ultimate example of the latter at the beginning of his post. :

In 1988, the decisive moment in the presidential campaign may have come when CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis this question, opening one of the Bush-Dukakis debates: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”

Needless to say, the response Dukakis provided didn't do him any good.

the BBC has great headlines sometimes

"Clumsy young 'face obesity risk'"

Clumsy and poorly coordinated children could be at higher risk of obesity in later life, a study says.

eight minutes in hell

Apologies if you actually watched the entire thing.

what counts

Hendrik Hertzberg knows how to be a baseball fan:

El Duque, who is my favorite Yankee currently playing (though no longer for the Yankees), has been a Met since 2006. He’s currently on the disabled list with a persistent bunion and hasn’t actually been in an official game yet this season, if you want to get technical about it. But when he suits up he still looks great. It’s all about the socks.

And previously:

To answer my friend’s question, even though I’m not a Yankee fan: my favorite Yankee playing today is El Duque, not only because he’s great but mainly because he wears his uniform the right way, with his socks showing. Not with his trouser bottoms down around his ankles like a schmuck.

Manny Ramirez is the most obvious example of this schmucktastic fashion choice, but, hey, that's just Manny being Manny; he can almost pull it off because it looks like he can't be any other way. Other players, though, would greatly benefit from the socks-up fashion, especially, it would seem, players whose body type isn't flattered by the unforgiving uniforms. Pulling up the socks doesn't hurt players who look like they were poured into their uniform either. Just look at Barry Zito: he might be having a laughably awful year, but at least he looks great doing it.

manga me

If you want minutes of distraction, you can create your own "manga avatar" here.

Emily Dickinson, "It was not death, for I stood up"

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And I was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,
Without a chance or spar,--
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.

(in comic form here)

critique of violence

According to witnesses, the BBC reports, on September 4, 2005, seven New Orleans policemen shot at a group of unarmed* civilians trying to cross the Danziger Bridge in an attempt to get food from a grocery store. Two of the civilians, including "Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, and James Brissette, 19, were shot and killed, and four other people were wounded." The police officers were facing charges ranging from attempted second-degree murder to first-degree murder until the other day when District Judge Raymond Bigelow threw out the charges because "prosecutors had violated state law by divulging secret grand jury testimony to a witness" and that "prosecutors had wrongly instructed the grand jury, and that grand jury testimony by three of the officers was used against them improperly."

Though it seems like The New York Times should have mentioned something about this, searches for "katrina shooting," "katrina police" and other possible terms turn up no relevant results. The misapplication of police violence during a catastrophic natural disaster is no small thing. In his excellent essay "Critique of Violence," Walter Benjamin argues that it is exactly this kind of use of police power that threatens democracy and the rule of law. Yet: nothing.

*Though the officers claimed that they opened fire only after being shot at, "Investigators later revealed that at least some of the shooting was by residents trapped by floodwater trying to attract the attention of rescue parties."

aspirin

The August 13, 1936 diary entry of Victor Klemperer, "a German-Jewish literary scholar who managed to survive the entire Nazi era in Dresden," offers, by way of George Packer's Interesting Times blog, a cool, damp cloth on the forehead for those suffering from Olympics fever:

I find the Olympics so odious because they are not about sport—in this country, I mean—but are an entirely political enterprise. “German renaissance through Hitler,” I read recently. It’s constantly being drummed into the country and into foreigners that here one is witnessing the revival, the flowering, the new spirit, the unity, steadfastness, and magnificence, pacific too, of course, spirit of the Third Reich, which lovingly embraces the whole world. The chanted slogans on the streets have been banned (for the duration of the Olympics), Jew-baiting, bellicose sentiments, everything offensive has disappeared from the papers until August 16, and the swastika flags are hanging everywhere day and night until then too.

Packer's entire post is worth reading. He doesn't recommend a full-scale boycott of the games or even a principled abstinence from viewing it. It's too late to boycott and not watching would only harm the non-watcher.He just hopes they fail:

When I was in Burma in June, where China is deeply resented for propping up the military regime, an outspoken woman told me, “We hope the Olympics go a-flop.” I love track and field and will be watching the 1500-meter finals. But I also hope the Beijing Olympics go a-flop.

jealousy

The best thing so far today? The last part of a conversation via instant message with a friend about to leave work:

Friend: Six minutes to go...

me: lucky

Friend: [six minutes later] BONG TIME!!!! Adios muchacho...

me: godspeed

there must be a limit

A conversation has been trickling down the hall for at least the last 15 minutes or so. The dominant voice has been going strong about sugar-free drinks and snacks and other dietary tidbits for the majority of that time. Another voice chimes assent occasionally, displaying a brave modicum of interest. Since full consciousness was not lent to listening, exact details are fuzzy and anxious to be forgotten, but one slipped sadly through the cracks: a "healthier" replacement for Splenda called, if pained memory serves, Splendoid. That might not be the correct name. So much effort seems to be wasted on thinking about these things. Why not just eat more fruits and vegetables?

free and clear

The Washington Post reports that a recent study by a researcher at UCLA--whose previous work was used by "federal health and drug enforcement officials [...]to make the case that the drug is dangerous"--has shown, "against expectations," "that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer." Although marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals, the THC "may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous."

Tashkin's study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex and neighborhood.

They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lighted up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.

"This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use," he said. "Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have real meaning."

(via Brian Carver)

just can't win

Some of the factories around Beijing that the Chinese government shut down in order to reduce pollution (an effort that seems to have fallen significantly short of achieving its goal, judging by the murky air seen during the cycling events) were producing chemicals used to produce drugs in India. According to the BBC, this has caused all sorts of problems:

[The shutdown of the factories] has led to a shortage of raw materials, which has pushed up prices everywhere.

"It's not that all the materials used to come from China," he says.

"But because China has stopped, there's pressure on materials coming from Taiwan, Korea, Europe. And everyone's taking a little bit advantage and jacking up their prices."

And if things go on like this, well, don't get sick in India:

J S Shinde, head of the Maharashtra State Chemists & Druggists Association, thinks that manufacturers will simply stop making the drugs that are not profitable and that a shortage of medicines could well be on the cards.

"If the prices of the raw materials for controlled drugs rises any further, there's a chance that the production of such drugs will simply stop," he says.

"I think it's highly likely that after September there'll be shortages of those drugs in India."

"the audacity of bleak despair"

This Modern World breaks down McCain's campaign tactics this week.

"making windows for myself"

John Lurie played music, acted (in, among other films, Stranger than Paradise, one of the best ever made), and made six episodes of a strange and wonderful TV show called Fishing with John. A 1994 diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease, which is debilitating and currently incurable, left him unable to play music, act or continue making his TV show. Nevertheless, as he tells LA Weekly in a recent interview, he still makes art:

For a little while, I thought I was dying. I was extremely ill, I couldn’t function, and I was stuck in my apartment. And I don’t know if it’s New York City or human nature, but everybody runs from you. So every night I’d be home alone, and I’d just started [sic] painting. It was like making windows for myself. It saved me.

(via murketing)

stuff

by Steve Powers, yours for $1,999 (via murketing)

good neighbors

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

--Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

the great highway

Pinakothek has yet to publish a disappointing post, but the recent entry titled shroud surpasses even the usual high expectations. A complete reading of the post is necessary, but, for the sake of titillation, an excerpt follows.

On a desultory journey toward an ambivalent goal, the narrator stumbles onto an abandoned house amid the never-ending plains of the midwest:

The parlor was a riot of carpets and overstuffed chairs and draperies and knicknack shelves, all of them variously torn, sagging, broken, and coated with greasy layers of dust. The piano appeared intact, but when I experimentally plunked a few keys, the result was a sound like tearing metal. The dining table was set for six, with cut-glass goblets and gilt-edged plates all strung together with spiderwebs. Astonishingly, it appeared that there had been food on the plates when they were abandoned. The only trace left was a scummy residue on each of the plates, along with a scattering of bones. Even the flies had gone. The kitchen, likewise, was filled with signs of activity--bowls, whisks, roasting pans, cutting boards and knives, all out on the counters, all of them dust-covered and as it were mummified. There seemed to be a yellowish pall in the air.

(Link)

If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger, There'd be a whole lot of Dead Copycats

(Link)

The Pogues, "Dirty Old Town"

I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
Kissed a girl by the factory wall

Dirty old town
Dirty old town

Clouds a drifting across the moon
Cats a prowling on their beat
Springs a girl in the street at night

Dirty old town
Dirty old town

Heard a siren from the docks
Saw a train set the night on fire
Smelled the spring on the smoky wind

Dirty old town
Dirty old town

I'm going to make me a good sharp axe
Shining steel tempered in the fire
Will chop you down like an old dead tree

Dirty old town
Dirty old town

Big Rock Candy Mountain

The World's Ugliest Shirt

(via panopticist)

magic circle

Karl Giberson has a well-reasoned article in Salon called "What's wrong with science as religion", in which he argues that, though militant atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have essentially made science (since he includes Hitchens, "reason" might be a more accurate, albeit broader and less precise, term) their new religion, science could never really replace religion. It doesn't seem like that's what anyone was calling for exactly--Dawkins et all seem more interested in reacting to and arguing against the idea of religion than creating a new one. Still, though the odd slide from reason to atheistic religion isn't exactly new, it's refreshing to see the argument appear again. A taste:

Wilson, along with Atkins, Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others, persuades us that science has, for thinking people, discredited religion. Nevertheless, they are quick to borrow from a religion they reject and take delight in using biblical metaphors. And as their science evolves to meet the "mythopoeic requirements" of their minds, it increasingly resembles religion.

"What is Art?" Part 1

Tolstoy says,

Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.

(Link)

"character matters"

Perhaps Monica Goodling had grown tired of more standard interview questions when she started asking applicants to the Justice Department slight variants of Stephen Colbert's standard question to congresspeople: "George W. Bush--great president or the greatest president?" Goodling, who attended Regent University Law School (a school, according to Dean Jeffrey Brauch, that is "committed to the proposition that there is truth--eternal principles of justice--about the way we should practice law and about the law itself. We believe character matters. We talk openly about how an attorney can have integrity and humility in a profession that challenges both"), asked applicants what it was about George W. Bush that made the applicant want to serve him. According to the New York Times, Goodling scanned resumes for “abortion,” “homosexual,” “Florida recount,” or “guns.” She also made notes that ensured the applicant was sufficiently conservative on, as she put it in her interview notes, "god, guns + gays."

Goodling displayed her commitment to "eternal principles of justice" in many ways. In one exemplary case, she propagated "unfounded rumors" that an applicant was gay and having an affair with her superior, Margaret Chiara, one of the nine U.S. Attorneys fired without explanation.

The applicant did not get the job.

(Monica/Angela picture via Swampland.)

(Link to NYT article)

touching on mass culture

Some people find Maggie Gyllenhaal very attractive; some might even consider her the most attractive lady alive, ever, in the history of the world. If anyone wants to argue otherwise, the video below doesn't make their task very easy. At one point, she even stumbles onto exactly what Leslie Fiedler was talking about in What Was Literature?! And, though it's hard to believe, she still seems very warm and genuine; she actually listens to the questions and doesn't answer like an entertainment robot. If someone can be successful in the entertainment industry and still retain at least an aura human emotion, they have something special. (Apologies for the advertisement.)

"But guess what? I didn't write Falconer, so I'm a disgrace to everyone who loves me."

Economies have waxed and waned since The Onion had something as good as "How Come No One Celebrates My Alcoholism Like John Cheever's?".

Vice recently published a detailed account of Cheever's final binge.

A taste of the fun:

Back home he demanded a drink, and when his family protested, he asked if he might take a valium instead; given the go-ahead, he swallowed three and poured himself a drink. During the Christmas feast, a hush fell over the table as he tried to eat peas: Time after time, suspensefully, the trembling fork ascended, only to spill its savory burden at the crucial moment. At last, a spoon was suggested. “I regret to tell you,” said Cheever (putting the fork aside), “that you have a father who is dying.”

who's on first?

In the middle of a long and understandably frustrated post about their recent controversial cover, New Yorker writer and sporter of longer hair than you probably expected, Hendrik Hertzberg, writes this sentence:

Andy Borowitz, whom I ran into the other day at a New Yorker softball game, remarked casually to me that the cover had a “P.O.V.”—point of view—“problem.”

Ah, to see that game in action.

oasis

It seems like the Pope Benedict XVI really took Wall-E to heart. According to the BBC, he told World Youth Day that "In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading - an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair." He went on to say that "The world 'needs renewal.'" These statements resonate, for some people, as deeply true. However, whether something as densely organized and hierarchical as Roman Catholicism provides the answer remains an open question. Still, hearing such thoughts spread wide by a more-or-less respected figure warms, in an odd way, the dialectical heart.

(Link)

"Where is that marvelous ape?"

The Huffington Post, self-described on their homepage as "The Internet Newspaper," may not abide by the highest journalistic standards.

Reporting on a joke that John McCain might have told over twenty years ago, Sam Stein, "reaches out" (perhaps he will "go forward" with his reporting if he has enough "bandwidth" and/or "cycles," but, hey, "it is what it is") to a reporter who covered the possible initial incident. She helpfully tells him,

"I'm not sure exactly what the wording was of the joke, but something was said. Some joke involving a rape and ape was said. Enough women repeated it to me at the time and the McCain campaign had a non-denial denial," said Coile, now with the Arizona Daily Star. "It came after his 'Seizure World' joke, in which he referred to the [retirement community] Leisure World as Seizure World... I just think it reinforced this idea that John McCain is humor-challenged." (Link)

Even though she's "not exactly sure what the wording was of the joke" she is certain that "something was said." Excellent. It's a good bet that something was said at an event where speeches were made. To bolster her claim that "something" was said, she cites another questionable joke McCain made, which almost adds up to circumstantial evidence. Then she goes on, after an unbracketed ellipses (did she just pause or were words taken out of her quote: HuffPo, what style manual are you using?), to vaguely confirm that McCain in fact told the joke: "it reinforced this idea that John McCain is humor-challenged." What does "it" refer to? The joke that was confirmed through rumor? "Enough women repeated it" to Coile to confirm? How many women is "enough" to qualify for fact checking?

Whether or not McCain actually told the joke is obviously irrelevant here. With but a wink and a nod to objective reporting, The Huffington Post clearly wants only to extend the narrative of John McCain-as-chauvinist-douchebag. Trying to pretend otherwise is low--exactly the kind of thing HuffPo would jump on Fox News for running with. Sure, he might not be the most sensitive speaker, but what of his actions, the substance? The article ends with a another nod to the idea that substance trumps innuendo (it quotes Linda Barter the head of the Arizona Women's Political Caucus, who says, "John McCain has not been pro-choice or supportive of issues related to women's reproductive health"), but this only adds a sheen of respectability to a petty partisan hack job.

"We've a long time together, me and you"

Note the level of detail: the tear on the chair, the lighter, the red eyes, the tattoo on the dolphin's arm, the water in the bong. Truly impressive.

(Link, thanks to J.R. Norton)

Att: Obama

W.H. Auden, in "September 1, 1939," was on to something:

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

(Link)

magic wand

There is undoubtedly a rhetorical virtue in stating the obvious, in getting back to the fundamental crux of the argument, but President Bush takes this virtue to a disturbingly tautological extreme. A few months ago, when asked at a press conference about rising gas prices, the President declared that, if he had one, he would wave a magic wand to reduce them; the stark reality was, however, that he didn't have a wand, magic or otherwise. (This was also the same press conference where he said he had yet to hear about gas prices nearing four dollars per gallon.) Today, at another press conference, the President invoked the same device, and pleaded the same impotence: that magic wand just doesn't exist:

There is no immediate fix. This took us a while to get in this problem; there is no short-term solution. I think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand -- but the President doesn't have a magic wand. You just can't say, low gas. It took us a while to get here and we need to have a good strategy to get out of it. (Link)

Extemporaneous speaking is difficult, especially when dealing with complex issues. But a pattern of this kind of non-logic substituting for genuine thought and argumentation belies a deeper, more disturbing problem.

Witness, for example, President Bush's recent gag at a "private meeting" at the G8 summit:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions. (Link, via clusterflock)

This kind of critique is almost too easy to make, but apathy presages a surrender of freedom. By focusing, perhaps necessarily, on the larger themes, the press fails to take note of the nuances of these arguments, which are not arguments at all but weak apologetics for a hardened epistemology.

(The New York Times and NPR on the today's press conference)

sharks don't love you back

(Link)

growtown

In the midst of much bad news--Iran launching missiles with the capability to reach Israel and then photoshopping photographs of the launch to make it seem like they launched more missiles than they actually did; Rice delivering very thinly veiled threats in reaction to Iran's launches; Obama voting for a bill that gives legal immunity to telephone companies that participated in the government's unconstitutional wiretapping, rendering any legal action against those companies effectively useless; massive suicide attacks in Afghanistan, forgotten almost as soon as they happen (hey, you can now download applications directly to your iPhone?)--it does a body good to read something simple and hopeful like this.

ecce homo

Zadie Smith has written an excellent review of a new "biographical essay" about Franz Kafka in The New York Review of Books. In it, she considers the the way Kafka has come to us, through biographers and editors. Looming over all the commentary and criticism is Max Brod, the friend who refused to burn the manuscripts but may have damaged them in other ways:

For when it came to editing the novels, Brod's sympathy for the theological would seem to have guided his hand. Kafka's system of ordering chapters was often unclear, occasionally nonexistent; it was Brod who collated The Trial in the form with which we are familiar. If it feels like a journey toward an absent God— so the argument goes—that's because Brod placed the God-shaped hole at the end. The penultimate chapter, containing the pseudo-haggadic parable "Before the Law," might have gone anywhere, and placing it anywhere else skews the trajectory of ascension; no longer a journey toward the supreme incomprehensibility, but a journey without destination, into which a mystery is thrust and then succeeded by the quotidian once more.

Smith also considers how a biographical leveling of Kafka might inform or alter a critical appraisal. Kafka, it turns out, enjoyed exaggeration, positively reveled in accentuating the negative:

For Kafka, the prospect of a journey from Berlin to Prague is "a foolhardiness whose parallel you can only find by leafing back through the pages of history, say to Napoleon's march to Russia." A brief visit to his fiancée "couldn't have been worse. The next thing will be impalement."

And her discussion of Kafka's daily schedule makes Kafka especially concrete--a physical and fallible person prone to frittering away his free hours:

Begley is particularly astute on the bizarre organization of Kafka's writing day. At the Assicurazioni Generali, Kafka despaired of his twelve-hour shifts that left no time for writing; two years later, promoted to the position of chief clerk at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute, he was now on the one-shift system, 8:30 AM until 2:30 PM. And then what? Lunch until 3:30, then sleep until 7:30, then exercises, then a family dinner. After which he started work around 11 PM (as Begley points out, the letter- and diary-writing took up at least an hour a day, and more usually two), and then "depending on my strength, inclination, and luck, until one, two, or three o'clock, once even till six in the morning." Then "every imaginable effort to go to sleep," as he fitfully rested before leaving to go to the office once more. This routine left him permanently on the verge of collapse.

six miles

A nice route for a pleasant bike ride. Highly recommended for lazy Saturday afternoons.