Since we had a bit of a discussion about ID last week, I thought this might be of interest to some. Here's the main point, a quote from Bush's science advisor, John Marburger:
Speaking at the annual conference of the National Association of Science Writers, Marburger fielded an audience question about "Intelligent Design" (ID), the latest supposedly scientific alternative to Charles Darwin's theory of descent with modification. The White House's chief scientist stated point blank, "Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory." And that's not all -- as if to ram the point home, Marburger soon continued, "I don't regard Intelligent Design as a scientific topic."
This makes me wonder what Bush's own position on this topic is. Were Marburger's words a deviation from the administration's platform? Obviously scientists should not be beholden to any political ideology, but the president's science advisor holds what would seem to be an inherently politicized position. A brief google search didn't turn up anything stating Bush's opinion. Anyone have an answer?
Read summaries of some of the most important philosophers' ideas in around 30 minutes per philosopher. There's Plato, Socrates, Boethius, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, and many others. Some very well chosen quotes, too. If you're in a real hurry, they even have a "Very Squashed Version." For example, from one of my favorite books:
When I wrote the following pages I lived alone in the woods, a mile from my neighbours, in a house I had built for myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labour of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. Men labour under a mistake. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed laying up treasure which moth and rust will corrupt.Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply, nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles. The exact cost of my house, was just over twenty-eight dollars. I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. I found myself suddenly neighbour to the birds and animals. Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. Time is but the stream I go fishing in. Sometimes in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon. I realise what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. I found, by measurement, that Walden Pond was not bottomless. I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. It seemed to me that I had several more lives to live. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I learned this, at least, by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. In proportion as he simplifies his life the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor will poverty be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
It seems to lose a little bit of the leisurely feel of Walden in the compression.
Looking for utilities for your computer? Check out this list of the best 46 freeware utilities. I've already found several that I'm installing. I would also point out that Sysinternals is an excellent, wonderful site.
(via del.icio.us)
This may be of interest only to myself and other lovers of Chaucer, but I thought I'd share a minor thought. Most people already know that English spelling was not standardized until much later than when Chaucer wrote, hence all the variations we find in his works. Even so, most modern editors attempt to standardize his spelling somewhat while retaining the flavor of variation which is fine as it doesn't effect the sense much. However, what a lot of people don't realize is that Chaucer's work was written without any punctuation whatsoever. For a good article on the effect this has on meaning, read Howell Chickering's "Unpunctuating Chaucer." You can find it in The Chaucer Review 25.2 (1990). For a practical example of this, let's look at one of my favorite passages from "The Clerk's Tale" as it is rendered in a couple of texts. First off, a modern translation:
"O storm-torn people! Unstable and untrue!
Always indiscreet, and changing as a vane,
Delighting ever in rumour that is new,
For like the moon aye do you wax and wane;
Full of all chatter, dear at even a jane;
Your judgment's false, your constancy deceives,
A full great fool is he that you believes!"
Now here's the passage in Middle English from the standard Riverside Chaucer, the most respected and widely used modern scholarly edition of Chaucer's works:
"O stormy peple! Unsad and evere untrewe!
Ay undiscreet and chaungynge as a fane!
Delitynge evere in rumbul that is newe,
For lyk the moone ay wexe ye and wane!
Ay ful of clappyng, deere ynough a jane!
Youre doom is fals, youre constance yvele preeveth;
A ful greet fool is he that on yow leeveth."
And now, from an online source:
"O stormy peple, unsad and evere untrewe!
Ay undiscreet and chaungynge as a vane,
Delitynge evere in rumbul that is newe;
For lyk the moone ay wexe ye and wane,
Ay ful of clappyng, deere ynogh a jane,
Youre doom is fals, youre constance yvele preeveth,
A ful greet fool is he that on yow leeveth!"
First off, a note on the quotation marks. This stanza is followed by "Thus seyden sadde folk in that citee." In other words, these lines are supposed to be a criticism of the foolish people by the wiser, more sober ones ("sad" or "sadde" can mean "serious, sober, steadfast, firm, trustworthy" in ME along with its modern meaning).
Now, note the differences between the two ME passages. The first one, from the Riverside Chaucer uses exclamations points very heavily, giving the passage a strong and powerful sense of criticism. The "sadde folk" are practically shouting their disapproval. The problem with this is that since Chaucer didn't use any punctuation they've added a significant amount of stress to the lines. I have little problem with the addition of commas, semi-colons, periods, or questions. They make the text easier to read while not changing the meaning too terribly much (in most, but not all cases; see Chickering for a detailed examination). Exclamation points, however, noticeably change the tone, suggesting that they should be used very sparingly, if at all. Here, however, the editors have added five! The second passage does far better and you can tell the difference. Without all the exclamations the passage gains a sadness and poignancy as if the speaker(s) were sadly shaking his or her head at the folly of the mob. Even so, there's still 2 too many !s. Also, look at the modern English translation for a clue as to why you need to read Chaucer in the original. For one, it's poetry. As Robert Frost has said, "poetry is what gets lost in translation." Secondly, not just sound and rhythm, but meaning changes. "Unsad" becomes "unstable," losing a whole complex of meanings. Likewise, "rumbul" becomes "rumor" turning a sensual detail into an abstraction. Naturally, I wouldn't write all this without an idea of my own as to how the line should be punctuated if it must be:
"O stormy peple, unsad and evere untrewe,
Ay undiscreet and chaungynge as a fane,
Delitynge evere in rumbul that is newe
(For lyk the moone ay wexe ye and wane)
Ay ful of clappyng, deere ynogh a jane:
Youre doom is fals; youre constance yvele preeveth.
A ful greet fool is he that on yow leeveth."
I think this version has a more delicate and sad tone that is appropriate to the "sadde folk" voicing the complaint. Rather than the indignation and energy implied by exclamation points, it is more the controlled and somewhat tired criticism of one who sees the follies of mankind, but knows they are unchangeable.
I plan to post something more substantial soon (I know you're all waiting impatiently), but this is going to be a weekend full of studying. In the meantime, check out these old school hip-hop party flyers from the early 80s—lots of them held in skating rinks and high school gyms. There are some legendary names on there and the art is nostalgialicious.
(via del.icio.us)
This is directed towards other website maintainers, bloggers, etc. Please, please, please do not make your links open in new windows by default. It's really quite annoying. If I wanted to stay on your site after clicking the link, I'd open it in a new tab myself. Forcing links to open in new windows means I have to either always open links in a new tab (better than new window) or deal with new windows at unpredictable times. You're imposing your choice of browsing style on me. If I want to open the link in a new window, I can do that. I can't *not* open it in a new window when you've dictated that it be so. Just stop it now. Ban the _blank.
"I solemnly swear that I will uphold the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of Colorado, and I will faithfully perform the duties of the position I am about to enter."
As deemed necessary by the state of Colorado, this is the oath I am expected to sign (in front of a notary) by Friday.
When I first saw the form, I was convinced it was an elaborate practical joke. Are we German Staatsbeamter (state officials) required to swear fealty to the state or are we college instructors? By what logic are we in a position to mar the Constitution more than any ordinary citizen?
It seems that the oath is required by state law (I suppose I signed it when I first came on--I can scarcely remember) and someone discovered that Ward Churchill's oath is missing. The fact that some faculty members don't have the oath on file is now being used as justification for forcing all of us to sign it this week. Perhaps they though Ward Churchill won't sign it—but he did.
The University of Colorado has been humiliated enough—from the shenanigans of the College Republicans (they put up a website where you can record every 'offensive' comment made by a teacher) to athletic sex scandals to the latest and greatest--Ward Churchill's idiotic remarks on 9/11 (and the equally idiotic media hysteria).
Now the state wants us to sign (or resign) a loyalty oath. How can the university hope to recruit significant scholars in the humanities and the social sciences—liberal or conservative—in this sort of climate? I suppose the State Legislature could care less about such matters--they've already slashed funding to the point where this university is (officially) no longer a state but an “enterprise” institution. Tuition is going through the roof. This being the case, why bother trying to lure accomplished scholars?
Yet major donors are bound to eventually grasp that state interference isn't going to help the university's efforts to maintain a top program in physics--as it is essential to recruit talent from Europe and the East Coast who generally have progressive opinions and might be scared of the increasingly McCarthyite atmosphere (coming from both the right and the left). One imagines that East Coast and European scholars find the University’s lack of power in the face of legislative ignorance highly amusing, and somewhat disturbing.
Ultimately, it’s not a big deal--the oath is meaningless. It's more ridiculous than anything else. I only hope the humiliations end here, for the sake of the faculty remaining.
As a Germanist, an object of perennial fascination for me is the influence of emigre German intellectuals (fleeing the Nazis) in the US--a topic that has reemerged recently with all the literature about Leo Strauss. A similar figure, though ideologically opposed, is Herbert Marcuse, who became famous in the late 60s as the intellectual "father" of the New Left. He even had the honor of being publically denounced by such defenders of virtue as Spiro Agnew (who, in great form, couldn't pronounce Marcuse's name). Marcuse, it seems, was actively corrupting the youth of San Diego (he had already been forced out of Brandeis University in Boston).
There's an interesting student documentary about Marcuse called "Herbert's Hippopotamus" that I found via the Marcuse family website. There's some great footage on Ronald Reagan's tenure as governer of California and his battle with the campus Left.
There is also a link to an amusing article published in Playboy magazine (in 69) describing one of Marcuse's speaking engagments that takes full advantage of the comic potential--an old-fashioned philosopher with a strong German accent being seen by New Lefters as some kind of orgiastic guru.
Surely one of the greatest comic strips of all time, now you can read tens year's worth of Calvin and Hobbes online. The Internets are great.
Just in case you ever forget the combination to your Master Lock, here's how to crack it. That, or you could just use a crowbar.
I'm getting pretty good at writing academic-sounding titles, eh? Phil has posted a good response to a response to a response (in other words, conversation) over at his site that I urge you to read. I don't quite have time to formulate my thoughts on the matter into a coherent post owing to school work, but hope to respond later this week. In the meantime, read his post and comment. You've all been far too quiet lately.
I have found my soul mate... that is, if I had a soul instead of these dry ashes in my chest.
Since I always find these fun and passed the last time this one (or some variant thereof) came around, I'll bite:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.
The book nearest to me right now is English Masterpieces, Volume IV: Milton edited by Maynard Mack. Here's the sentence from Book I of "Paradise Lost":
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific.
Looks like I lucked out. This way, I look all literary.
In a similar, but more erudite and snobbish vein than the guide to electronica I posted earlier, here's the mSpace Classical Music Browser. Read about all the greats and listen to selections of their music.
Well what do you know? It's caused by humans after all:
The results are so compelling that they should end controversy about the causes of climate change, one of the scientists who led the study said yesterday."The debate about whether there is a global warming signal now is over, at least for rational people," said Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "The models got it right. If a politician stands up and says the uncertainty is too great to believe these models, that is no longer tenable."
Of course, most scientifically-literate and reasonable people have long known that by far the most likely cause of global warming is humans. Speaking of which, Anna has a nice post about this topic with links to documentary evidence of shrinking icebergs and the like. However, even with all this, I strongly doubt that those who would prefer to stick their heads in the sand and claim "not enough is known" to definitively blame human activity will continue to do so. The creationist and ID contigents should be ample proof of people's ability to ignore scientific evidence when it contradicts their pre-existing beliefs. That said, I don't think we'll see an environmental apocalypse if it's still possible to avoid one. Since the 70s the world's recognition of environmental problems and attempts to improve them has increased significantly. The only issue I'm still very worried about is tropical deforestation. The rainforests are already showing the effects of global warming. The tallest trees are growing even faster due to increased levels of carbon dioxide, thus blocking more sunlight from the smaller trees. Rainforests are supposed to be at a state of equilibrium. Dramatic changes threaten to disrupt the entire ecosystem, making the forests less efficient at cleaning the air and threatening the habitats of numerous species we have yet to even discover. The planet has already lost most of its lung capacity; we can't afford to lose much more. There's also the problem with a chaotic system like the world environment in that small changes can cause major repercussions. There is the distinct possibility that a regular rise in temperature of only a few degrees could induce rapid and drastic changes in the environment. Even if the ecosystem is adaptive and flexible, it can be likened to a rubber band—you can only stretch it so far before it snaps. For example, there have been studies on insects and birds in England show their normally interlocked life cycles going out of phase. The slightly warmer temperatures causes flowers to blossom earlier. The insects who depend on those flowers for food sources have evolved so that they hatch at what was the right time to take maximum advantage of these flowers, but are now catching on the tail-end of the blossoming. This reduces the number of insects that survive. In turn, this reduces the food supply for the birds that eat these insects. Since some organisms base their blossoming/hatching/molting/etc on the temperature, while others use other timers, a change in one variable can throw off the whole machinery. For a more rigorous and detailed explanation of this phenomenon, read this. I like to think that even if most people don't know the details that I've just mentioned, they at least recognize that global warming is a Bad Thing and, if no longer preventable, at least reversible or able to be slowed. That, however, does not mean the politicians or corporations care. There is too much profit available to companies willing to abuse the world. Humans as a whole have a difficulty finding anything beyond their immediate circumstances threatening, so we don't see the American populace concerned enough about things happening across the globe and twenty years from now to pressure our politicians to really change things. Bush's insistence that global warming does not exist should alone be enough to cast serious doubts on his ability to lead the nation. It represents an alarming disregard for science and the welfare of the earth's future populations. Instead, people either agree with him or discount the issue as less important than more immediate problems like war, taxes, and health care. As with many, many other issues, the best solution I can see is a better-educated populace. That, however, is a whole 'nother problem.
Ever been confused by the profusion of electronic music genres? Here's your answer. It's "Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music," a nice graphical interface with descriptions of styles and samples.
Cory Doctorow writes:
Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of Fahrenheit 451 to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives.Today, Infinite Matrix magazine published the latest of these, a story called "I, Robot," which describes the police state that would have to obtain if you were going to have a world where there was only one kind of robot allowed and only one company was allowed to make it.
Check out the story. I haven't read it yet, but I've enjoyed everything he's written to date, so I expect this one to be fun, too. He's even managed to permanently implant a few ideas in my head over the past few years.
A paper is currently under peer-review arguing that the methane signatures on Mars strongly suggest the presence of microbial life. I'll be surprised if all the recent signs that Mars has water and life turn out to be wrong. I eagerly await proof that Earth isn't the only planet in the universe with life. Even if it's just microbes (that may have seeded evolution on our planet), that would be proof that life can and does exist elsewhere. While the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of many planets with life on them, they're also overwhemingly against the chance that we'll discover any of them.
Find out how popular your name has been through the last hundred years. This is a pretty cool interactive graph of name popularity.
(via Scott Rosenberg)
MP3 4U is a community site featuring free and legal MP3 downloads. I just found a very nice track from a rapper named Free Speech.
Or, perhaps more accurately, politics as literary criticism. What am I talking about? Not Marxist, feminist, queer, or other readings prevalent in contemporary literary criticism (all of which I find interesting, useful, and as incomplete as any other reading; they must all be taken together), but a recent War Room post:
"Outside these walls, the cries of those powerless souls who are injured, disenfranchised, or otherwise aggrieved may, indeed, be faint. But those same pleas for help echo powerfully within the Department of Justice. Every day, like a steady drum beat, we are asked to provide an answer to a problem, to secure a remedy, to be a champion. And every day, this department responds, as it has done so time and time again throughout the history of our beloved America."The remarkable thing isn't that Gonzales would invoke the "powerless souls who are injured, disenfranchised, or otherwise aggrieved" when neither he nor his boss has been all that helpful to any of the above. (Think tortured detainees, think voters in Ohio and Florida, think victims of medical malpractice or asbestos poisoning.) What we're struck by is the grammatical disconnect -- the embedded admission of a gulf -- between the "cries" of those "powerless souls" and the actions of the Bush Justice Department.
That last sentence sets up what can only be considered a close reading of Gonzales's remarks that would make any professor of literature proud. It's precisely the sort of thing I love to do when writing about poems (see my earlier post on Lycidas for instance). Perhaps if the general populace were trained to pay such close attention to language and the nuance of meaning, politicians would find it more difficult to obscure their meanings. Such training is unlikely to become widespread, but, as Milton wrote, "For so to interpose a little ease, / Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise."
Jay-Smooth got this link from someone else and now we bring it to you - the Kris Kross official Website, preserved in its original form since 1996.
Be careful there.
Not a massive number of links, but they've started to build up in my mail again. All these links are now ancient in Internet time, I'm sure:
McDonald's wants you to have sex with their death-burgers.
Techno and breakin' used to sell cars?! Never! Still, it's a cool commercial.
A weed bikini. Not for Drug Warriors or Prudes.
Schadenfreude is a beautiful thing.
And, in honor of V-Day a tshirt for geeks.
But who cares about that? The recent tsunami unearthed ancient artifacts.
Here's a free classical music site I just found via del.icio.us:
Classic Cat is a directory with links to over 1500 free to download classical performances on the internet, sorted by composer and work. To find the classical music you select a composer, a work and a performing musician. Then you are transported to the page of the musician(s) where the music is hosted and you can download it.
I haven't explored much yet, but it looks good.
Phil has a good post up on the topic, diametrically opposed to my recent one. Read it. He discusses the distinction between soul and sentience:
This is an interesting turn. He is not interested in discussion of the soul as "is not testable. It is a matter of faith." Ah, but this is too simplistic. After all, the reliance on "sentience" is many ways merely a hark back to faith. The difference, however, is this - discussion on the soul has a long history, over a thousand years, with much thinking involved. One could at least give it credit for thought. "Sentience," on the other hand, is much more fuzzy. Indeed, "sentience" seems only to mean our own subjective consideration of who we consider "truly" human (whoeverthehell "we" are). One can't have it both ways - either keep the soul out (including such thin secularized versions thereof), or keep it in (allowing for the secular and theological versions).
This is an interesting point, but I don't think the two are as conflatable or the idea of sentience as mysterious as he makes it out to be. An easy test is this: I know I am sentient; I do not know if I have a soul. The reason we can't know for sure if someone else is sentient is the same reason we can't know for sure they exist at all. However, unless we're going to succumb to the narcissistic fallacy, it's reasonable to assume that if "cogito ergo sum" then "cogitat ergo est" for anyone exhibiting behavior consistent with self-awareness. That's probably not philosophically sound, but it passes the test of common sense. Despite the fact that people have been writing about what a soul is for thousands of years, we're still no closer to knowing what it is or if it exists. However, in the past hundred years we've made rapid scientific advances in neuroscience, neurobiology, psychology, and all the other fields that relate to consciousness, awareness, and sentience. I feel confident we will eventually be able to give a scientific account for what comprises sentience and who has it. One caveat: I'm not attempting to be terribly exact with my language here; I'm using "sentience" and "self-awareness" more or less interchangeably, though they're not. Even so, I think everyone knows what I'm talking about. If not, we can digress in the comments.
He goes on to write something I just don't understand:
What is "human"? Well, that is a trick, isn't it? After all, we are dealing with a pluralistic society, one with many comprehensive notions of the good, what humanity is, and the like. And, as so many folks have made so very clear, as any invocation of God would be a step towards theocracy, the Inquisition, and the like, we can't necessarily rely on any of them. So, let's rely on the basics, the "relatively reliable methods of inquiry" (mentioned, and used, before, here). "Soul" can't work, as it's not "testable." But, along the same lines, "sentience" also fails the test, since what counts as "sentience" (first self-willed act, ability to cognitively know desires, etc.) will also be tied up in comprehensive notions of the good.
How is "sentience" "tied up in comprehensive notions of the good"? This may be obvious to Phil or other more philosphically-versed readers, but to me this is a large jump that I cannot follow.
He concludes thusly:
Life must be the foundation for the legal protection of human beings. If for no other reason, than for one's own self-interest, or else one might one day find him/herself in the category of non-human, available for killing without legal protection, all for the crime of existence.
I would certainly agree except for the fact that abortion has not been the first step in slippery slope towards the general devaluation of human life. I would imagine that part of the reason for this is that there is an unmistakeable difference between a fetus and a human: birth. If you want to look at biology as Phil does, you can't get a clearer line of demarcation than that. Of course, the obvious problem with this is that we blur the lines between newborns and third-trimester fetuses (rightly so), leading to these discussions. But back to my point about the lack of a slippery slope. Although I shamefully haven't checked these facts myself (so if they're wrong, please provide reputable data and argument), but nations where abortion has been strictly criminalized have seen a marked decrease in compassion towards and concern for children. This would seem to be the very outcome which Phil sees abortion leading towards. If it did, I think I would lean strongly against keeping abortions legal, but I have yet to see any evidence to support that.
Another puzzle that requires you to click on things in the right order and with the correct timing. Enjoy.
As some of you know, my grandparents live in Clovis and my parents met there. Having visited that small-town wasteland many times, I am not at all surprised at this. In fact, I think I even know who the person in question is. What I don't understand is why anyone with the good taste to display Coop's work would stay in Clovis.
The poor girl, looks like she hit her head. I found this on Marginal Revolution where the people in the video are inappropriately labeled French. It's clear everyone's speaking English, it's just hosted on a French site. Plus, the guys are too fat to be anything but American. Anyways, check it out.
Many people consider Milton's "Lycidas" one of the best poems in English. It's not necessarily an easy poem to gain entry into, but it's definitely worth the effort. I'd recommend Milton's Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem as a starting place. It has a lot of classic essays that you have to read if you want to know where the conversation about this work began. For now, if you want to read a slight piece of commentary on the poem, you can read mine. It's not something I'm completely happy with, but I thought I'd share nonetheless.
Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears,
And slits the thin spun life.
(75-76)
As Rosemond Tuve notes, to speak of any part of Milton's "Lycidas" requires one to speak of the whole. The nearly fractal nature of the poem implies a useful corollary: to speak of the whole of the poem, one may begin with the merest snippet. Indeed we find many of the poem's ideas come together in the lines quoted above. Perhaps the most immediately noticeable part of these lines is the word "slits." When describing the action of "shears" most would undoubtedly use the word "snips" rather than "slits." Although the use of unexpected words is a hallmark of great poetry, the choice here is a particularly excellent one as it embodies one of the poem's strongest motivating ideas—violence. While "snips" implies a mundane and quick cutting across a thread, "slits" disturbs us far more. The word suggests a length-wise cutting akin to how a suicide slits his wrists. The liquid sound of "slits" imparts an abrupt speed to the action, mirroring the suddenness with which the young King was lost. The string of monosyllabic words and the prevalence of the vowel "i" force the reader's mouth into a tight grimace, the very expression one wears once fully aware of the line's mimetic violence. However, the brutality of this line would not be so readily apparent if it lacked something with which to contrast it, a role which the previous line fills admirably. Although Milton inverts what would be line 75's first iamb into a trochee in order to stress death's approach, the line as a whole is more noticeably iambic and hence rhythmically tamer than the following line. That is not to say there is no violence in "th'abhorred shears," only that death is not enacted by the very sounds of the words. By recasting Atropos as a Fury rather than a Fate, Milton increases our sense that death results not from an unalterable plan against which it is futile to rail, but from a wild power that stalks the world. Although the weaving of life's pattern continues, Atropos transforms from the natural last step in a calm and domestic scene into a personification of "blind" rage. Death becomes arbitrary and unplanned. We note that "th'abhorred shears," like many other parts of the poem, perform multiple functions. The phrase calls to mind both the apocalyptic "two-handed engine" and the images of clothing that appear through the poem. Furthermore, the "shears" require a hand to wield them. In a poem so consistently focused on the body (or absence thereof), we cannot fail to feel the hand of the "blind Fury" being woven into the larger tapestry of the poem.
Indeed, we may easily see how the images and ideas inherent in these two lines branch out through the rest of the poem. As we expect in a pastoral, serene nature and simple life figure prominently. The "high lawns," "hazel copses green," and "flowerets of a thousand hues" strewn across poem combine with idyllic human activity—"batt'ning [the] flocks," "footing slow," and sporting "in the shade"—to create a current of peacefulness appropriate to the genre. Against this, however, are the stronger currents of danger and death, the impetus of the poem. From the first lines we discover verbs similar to "slits" in their depiction of violence. At the start of the poem Milton writes, "I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, / And with forc'd fingers rude / Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year." Like the combination of peaceful weaving with "blind Fury," these lines yoke a typically calm scene to destruction. From the very start hands "pluck" and "shatter," agents of death intruding on the natural world. Likewise, the "gory visage" of Orpheus pollutes the Hebrus, a scene recalled towards the end of the poem:
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world.
(154–8)
How can we not hear "Hebrus" in "Hebrides"? With irreverence like that shown to Orpheus's head, the bones of Lycidas are "hurled," yet another brutal verb depicting the world's lack of concern for humanity. Like the first lines we considered, these also sound like the violence they depict. The repetition of sibilants and aspirates beat against us until the waves close over our heads.
Like the contrast in sound and rhythm between lines 75 and 76 "Lycidas" presents a contrast between pervasive violence and the idyllic pastoral that enhances our sense of both. More specifically, the images of thread, scissors, and weaving inherent in the "thin spun life" ripple through the poem to other sections. Clothing figures prominently in the poem, beginning with the speaker's "sable shroud" which like the "thin spun life" combines death with cloth. Notably, both images also appear in passages wherein Milton considers the role of poetry, almost as if the former proleptically answers the questions of the latter. What "boots it?" "The meed of some melodious tear" that "with lucky words [favors his] destined urn." In the flower passage towards the end of the poem, we again find clothing important. The poet calls not only "the well-attired woodbine," but "every flower that sad embroidery wears" to mourn the death of Lycidas. By personifying the flowers Milton links the passage to earlier ones in which clothing appears while paradoxically highlighting the absence of any human figure, an echo of the absence of the drowned corpse. Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, the "false surmise" of the passage—the poet only bids the flowers to mourn Lycidas—comes aground against Lycidas's ocean-hurled bones, yet another juxtaposition like that of "the thin spun life" with "th'abhorred shears."
Like Camus, another personification of nature in which clothing figures prominently, we may go "footing slow" throughout "Lycidas" tracing the many ramifications of lines 75–76. Although many critics have seen the structure of the poem as a tripartite one, an observation that is nearly indisputable, we may also note the subtler warp and woof of the poem's structure in its many interlocking sections. Like the embroidered vegetation which blankets the fields, "the thin spun life" spreads its tendrils vine-like throughout the poem until we cannot disentangle one line from the others. Despite the complaint raised by some critics that attempting to prove that "Lycidas" is a unified whole through an examination of its imagery is merely indicative of the prejudices of our time, it is nevertheless an inescapable fact that nearly every part of the poem recalls the whole, an astounding achievement in a poem so diverse. Just as, in the words of Harold Bloom, "criticism is the art of knowing the hidden roads that go from poem to poem," so may criticism profitably walk the hidden roads that run through a single poem. How else, after all, are we to understand the paradox that a poem with so many apparent digressions feels so coherent?
On the heels of revelations that the White House paid several conservative "journalists" to tout GOP talking points in their columns, now we discover that an even less reputable reporter—someone not actually a reporter at all and who uses a pseudonym—received regular access to White House press conferences (if such access can be called "regular" considering the ridiculous infrequency of press conferences) to lob soft-ball questions at the president. Doubtless McClellan will claim no knowledge on his or the president's part in this though Bush did call on this fraud. After all, the White House is a big bureaucracy. They can't be expected to know everything that goes on. Of course, that's despite the administration's famous message discipline and top-down control. If this breaks into a large enough scandal (which I'd be surprised to see; few people seem too concerned about the paid-for journalists) I'm confident an appropriate scapegoat will be found. It's quite disgusting. Obviously the administration realizes that its message cannot withstand honest scrutiny and open debate, so they resort to tactics reminscent of the Politburo. Bush and his cronies know no shame.
The ability to think well about abortion in such a polarized political and social climate as ours is a rare one. However, the author of this article manages it excellently. I found the essay via a Salon article on the topic (also a piece well-worth reading). I still don't have a settled opinion on abortion, but after thinking about it for quite a while now (off and on over a few years) I feel like I'm approaching a position that I find morally defensible, compassionate, and sane. The largest problem I have with anti-abortionists is their simple-minded insistence on equating even a blastocyst with an adult human. Yes, a fetus is alive and is in a simplistic sense a "human life," but that does not give it the same value as a fully-developed and sentient human. To claim that a fetus does have the same value is either an insincere rhetorical ploy or an example of poor thinking; I respect neither. However, as "Life After Roe" discusses, pro-choice advocates demonstrate a similar close-mindedness in their inability to even discuss the value of a fetus—clearly greater than zero. The image I find dominant in my mind when considering this is that of a line (or curve, I'm not sure what the equation is) on an X-Y scale where X is time and Y is value. More simply, as time progresses and the fetus nears birth, value goes up. As a corollary to this, the morality of abortion—barring extreme cases such as danger to the mother—drops. This seems to be the general consensus among the non-idealogues who do not oppose abortion outright, but nevertheless feel uneasy about it at times. Like I said, I do not have a settled opinion about this, so I won't give you My Answer. I highly recommend that you read the first essay I linked to, however, if you're at all interested in this topic. It's one of the most thoughtful and nuanced pieces I've read about abortion.
For those of you who use Firefox (which should be all of you), there's a homograph exploit that could cause you to fall prey to various phishing scams. There's more information here and here. About twelve hours later, a version that allows you to fix the problem was made available. So, download it, install it, type "about:config" in the address bar and set "network.enableIDN" to "false". I'm inclined to agree that this is largely Verisign's fault, not the browser's, but nevertheless, it's something to be aware of. There are slightly simpler fixes (which you'll find looking at the links I've posted), but none are as permanent as the one I've linked. However, keep in mind that installing an extension wipes this one out, too. I trust the Firefox developers will have this fixed soon, so for now the hack works. Unfortunately, the hack makes the spoofed links return a 404 rather than something else, so it just looks like a broken link. Still, that's better than the consequences of falling for the exploit.
While on the subject of phishing, I'll round out my PSA with a quiz that tests your ability to spot phishing scams.
Apparently there was this whole State of the Union Speech thing that Shrub gave last week. Since I'm trying to pretend that he doesn't exist, I didn't watch it or read any of the commentary on it. However, in reading a humor site, I accidentally read a summary and analysis of the speech couched in funny language that is worth reading. As a teaser, here's part:
"We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy -- and chief among them is freedom from fear." Oh, we're free from fear now? You guys had spent that last three years sounding the terror alert every Thursday and insisting that Saddam Hussein was 14 minutes away from acquiring Giant Carnivorous Robots, but now that Bush is re-elected I guess we're in the clear.
His bit about Social Security "reform" is well worth reading as well. Now I will return to my protective anti-politics cocoon.
Continuing my tradition of harvesting interesting links from BoingBoing (Is this even necessary? Doesn't everyone read BoingBoing?), check out The Cuddly Menace. It's wonderful.
Well, I just finished putting together an annotated bibliography of some 15 critical pieces on Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona (not a great book, but enjoyable enough). Ramona was Jackson's attempt to persuade the populace and Congress to reform the laws regarding Native Americans. It has often been compared to Uncle Tom's Cabin though it was not nearly as successful. Despite that (and there's been a fair amount of criticism on precisely why it failed and how it undermines its own purposes), it was a best-seller from the time it was first published. In 1893 it was one of only three contemporary novels held by over 50% of all American libraries (it was in 68% of them). The story itself involves a half-Indian girl named Ramona, raised as an elite Spanish California (Californios were the elite Spanish/Mexican landowners living in California; they were displaced by American settlers after the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo which gave California to the U.S.) who falls in love with Alessandro, a Mission Indian. They run off from Senora Morena's rancho (the evil step-mother) and endure a series of tribulations, almost all of which were taken from real life. Jackson was an agent for the Indian Commission and spent a good amount of time in California studying the Mission Indians. She combined a number of their stories into Ramona and sugar-coated it with a sentimental romance plot. Probably the best thing about the novel is its description of natural landscapes. You get a great sense of Edenic lushness throughout the novel. Anyway, not even close to a masterpiece, but a quick read with a certain amount of charm. To be honest, I think the criticism it has inspired has often been more interesting than the novel itself.
Bit of trivia: I started this post intending to only briefly mention what I'd been working on today, then extol the virtues of wine and jazz—one of the greatest combinations of all time. Ah well...
Some artists got together, bought paintings at thrift stores, then overlayed them with their own ideas. This one's my favorite, but they're all pretty cool.
(via BoingBoing)
He probably should have done this two years ago, but now Emmitt is retiring. Football Outsiders has a good look at where Emmitt ranks on the all-time rushing list. Personally, I'd place him a bit higher due to his consistency, but I'm also a Cowboys fan. I remember one time I was driving down Hulen Street in Fort Worth and saw a nice convertible (I don't remember the model) with a vanity plate that said "EMMITT." "Odd," I thought. Then I noticed that the man driving it was Emmitt himself. He's smaller than I expected. He ended up driving within a couple blocks of my parents house before he turned down Alta Mesa. It was cool.
Via BoingBoing, here's a Beatles/Monkees mashup. Perhaps a blasphemous monster for the True Believers (or should that be Writers in this case?), but enjoyable nevertheless.
Mallarme’s GTA post has finally motivated me to write a little something about my own recent gaming. Because, really, honestly, my first response was . . . who gives a fuck about GTA anyway? You want immersive, interactive, unpredictable? Nothing – and trust me, I’ve played a lot of video games – but nothing in the medium can hope to compare in richness and depth with Blizzard’s new World of Warcraft. If you’re a serious gamer and you’re playing anything else, you might as well be drinking raw sewage.
I had not done much online gaming at all before this winter – I played a few days of Dark Age of Camelot, but thought it was boring and visually bland. I played the beta of a game called Saga of Ryzom, which was beautiful but utterly lacking in compelling gameplay. But despite these disappointments, I have continually thought about the possibilities of these sorts of games, imagining the ideal experience even when faced with the often lackluster reality. World of Warcraft is the game I had been imagining in my head – a game in which, while you may or may not occupy the persona of a different person (depending on the customs of your particular server), you undeniably enter a different world, a world whose logic will grip you just as forcefully as the logic and customs of the real world. I’ll give you an example.
My brother, who I introduced to the game, has an addictive personality and is now, after a couple of weeks, quite a bit more powerful and connected within the game than I am. He’s a member of a pretty powerful guild, membership in which, as they would say, has its privileges. The problem is, he’s told me there are a couple of guys in the guild who are openly racist, and the other members at least tolerate this. So I’m faced with a dilemma – do I take a moral stance and give up the chance to be part of a prestigious organization, or do I tell myself it’s just a game and join up, ignoring the wider implications? This is the sort of quandary that is unlikely to emerge in Grand Theft Auto. You kill the hooker – there is no moral debate.
Of course, this is a computer game, not Ethics 101. What any video game has to be is fun – and World of Warcraft is fun like Suicide Girls are sexy. The combat is complex, frenetic, and unpredictable, even if you’re just fighting one-on-one against the computer (what’s known as PvE, or Player versus Environment). Once you’re working in a group with other people, the complexity and the fun start to compound geometrically. Once you’re working in a group, against another group of players, you have a recipe for some of the most joyful chaos you’re likely to ever experience on a computer screen.
But I wouldn’t be bothering with this ringing endorsement if it was just ‘really, really fun.’ The first Knights of the Old Republic was really, really fun, but even though I got the sequel to that game for Christmas, I literally haven’t touched it in the month since. World of Warcraft exemplifies the potential of the Massively Multiplayer genre, and that potential reaches into something beyond fun, into a realm that - well, I’ll let Julian Dibbell tell his side of the story –
The games we choose for our amusement are becoming so complex, so involving, that the line between gameplay and career, between gameworld and society, begins to blur. In the course of [Dibbell's Play Money] project, I met many players of UO who were just as much laborers in the UO economy, even if they wouldn't have said so themselves. I also encountered ethical dilemmas, questions of economic justice even, that would never have troubled me as they did if the economy in question were merely a game.
Dibbell is concerned with the economic side of these virtual worlds, which is in itself fascinating. But there’s much more to it than that, a subjective experiential element that I must admit is just on the border between inspiring and disturbing. Interacting with other humans in a game context is a fantastic experience, but this is also found in non-persistent games like Counterstrike and Rainbow Six. Unlike the undeniable ‘game’ status of these experiences, there is an overwhelming realness to time spent in the completely digital realm of Azeroth. A few experiences that have, at least for me, carried a disconcerting amount of weight include the sense of wonder that overwhelms me upon discovering a new realm, or a new type of adversary; the deep anxiety that comes when I’ve accidentally stumbled into an area where I’m far outclassed by every creature present and have to move with extreme care to not attract their attention; the heart-pounding tension of being attacked by another player and having to make split-second decisions to defend myself – followed sometimes by the deep satisfaction of beating another player in combat . . . the list goes on.
The richness of these experiences, though dependent on the well-balanced and smooth gameplay, isn’t guaranteed by these features. To my mind, their weight is primarily based on the persistent and entirely unique nature of your avatar – a uniqueness that arises not from anything so minimal as appearance, though showing off your ‘leet gear’ is one of the game’s many pleasures. The true uniqueness rises from an experience that no other type of game can reproduce – your character has an entirely unique, linear history. There is no saving in the game, no ‘going back’ to a previous moment in time. For the first time in a game time flows irresistibly forward, and thus has meaning. There is only one ‘first time’ that you will accomplish any one thing with a particular character (and given the time involved, most people will have one character their primarily invested in). The experience is a microcosm of life itself, and while I have done my best to resist the gravitational pull it exerts to pull me away from real life, I can understand how some people lose that battle (people who lose jobs, lovers, jobs over games like this). Because even though my own life is not without its ups and downs and substantial accomplishments and little dramas, my fake life has, for the last month, been frankly just as important to me. And as worrying as that is, it's also quite fascinating.
And damn, it's fun.
As usual, Juan Cole has a highly informative post giving the details and a reasoned analysis of the recent election. Since I have not been able to obsessively follow all the stories like I was once able to, these paragraphs took me a bit by surprise:
With all the hoopla, it is easy to forget that this was an extremely troubling and flawed "election." Iraq is an armed camp. There were troops and security checkpoints everywhere. Vehicle traffic was banned. The measures were successful in cutting down on car bombings that could have done massive damage. But even these Draconian steps did not prevent widespread attacks, which is not actually good news. There is every reason to think that when the vehicle traffic starts up again, so will the guerrilla insurgency.The Iraqis did not know the names of the candidates for whom they were supposedly voting. What kind of an election is anonymous! There were even some angry politicians late last week who found out they had been included on lists without their permission. Al-Zaman compared the election process to buying fruit wholesale and sight unseen. (This is the part of the process that I called a "joke," and I stand by that.)
The stoppage of vehicle traffic seems like a necessary step to assure even a modicum of safety for voters, but Cole makes the perfectly logical point that the insurgency's failure to make a real dent in the election process does not mean the battle is even close to over. What is far, far more disturbing though is the fact that nobody knew who they were voting for. What kind of election is that? Would you vote for your president based only on party affiliation? Although that's how the vast majority of Americans do end up voting, at least they have the illusion of voting for the man rather than the party. In some cases it might actually be true (Reagan and Clinton both having had significant crossover appeal). I understand that potential violence almost required most of the candidates to run anonymously, but it's not as if Iraq is going to be run by some faceless shadow government (is it?). The Iraqi people will eventually know who their leaders are, so the desire for anonymity during the election itself seems a bit misguided at best. Of course, I suppose it's better than nothing, hence all the cheering in Iraq and in the American news media.
Ars Technica has a post about a blind painter who was written about in New Scientist. The painter is able to accurately draw and paint realistic scenes with a sophisticated grasp of perspective, light, and other things you would not normally expect of a blind person. The Ars Technica article discusses this in more length, but it seems similar to the phenomenon of blind-folded chess to me. The ability to visualize is clearly distinct from the ability to see. What seems most intriguing about this story though, is that here is an artist working in a visual medium unable to view his own finished works. I realize that for the artist there's also a tactile sense during the painting, but it's still not quite the same. Milton, for example, continued to write long after he went blind. I suppose this painter's situation would be analogous to Beethoven. If the artist can hear or see the work in his mind, then why does he need to experience the finished product outside himself? That is for others.
Salon has a parody article about a combination of Myst and Grand Theft Auto. For the most part it ranges from mildly amusing to ho-hum, but this part is great for anyone who's spent too much time playing GTA:
There's that one-of-a-kind "Grand Theft Auto" moment when you've beaten a hooker senseless with a golf club, dragged a tourist from his station wagon, and sped off down a crowded sidewalk, only to realize your sole regret is that you jacked a car with such crummy acceleration.
I do, however, have a couple of objections to this passage. First of all, you do not beat people senseless with a golf club. You crush their skulls and keep beating them as the blood stains the sidewalks. Secondly, you should always make sure to sleep with the hookers first, then once they get out of the car kill them and take all their money.
