The Decline and the Fall

It seems to me

2008-07-14T22:56:00.001-07:00

That we must try to understand each other. Otherwise, well, "otherwise"? If we understand, yes, we must try to empathize. "Emphasize empathy, to empower the enfeebled youth."

I am the tallest man on earth, because I'm standing on a rock roughly six thousand metres above sea level in South America. The reason I am taller than a British man of equal stature who stands upon Mt. Everest is because I am closer to space, and because I am closer to space I am taller. sub specie aeternitatis, we will continue to praise the triumphs of our forebears and decry the failures and shortcomings of our youth.

We all wish for a wistful time, and some of us get it long after we've left. Because really, that's what being wistful means. It means to grow so weak, so utterly weak from longing that we can no longer yearn. We can simply look back, our hair being shuffled and run through by the eager hands of some foreign wind.

There's nothing we can do but sing our songs and row our lifeboats home.

news today

2008-07-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

InBev's offer for Budweiser was accepted, but more importantly Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac edged closer to failure. Even after the Fed's assurances the stock was down several percentage points. It's obviously not an adequate corollary but when Bear Stearns was bought out with government backing it gained $8 from its initial purchase price of $10. However today shows that the US Government is itself edging closer to insolvency--it's word carries half or less of the weight that it did before the subprime crisis hit.

Triumph for Muslim Intellectualism, or...

2008-07-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

Final proof that the internet will be the death of intellectualism? M. Fethullah Gülen's triumph in a recent FP/Prospect poll for the "World's Top Intellectual" is interesting in several respects, most of which are gone over rather sheepishly by Prospect's editor in this article.

Nuttal, in his editorial (linked above), writes that "perhaps we can see through Gülen’s victory the emergence of a new kind of intellectual—one whose influence is expressed through a personal network, aided by the internet, rather than publications or institutions."

A decent job shimmying away from the question, but it won't do. The real question Gülen's victory raises is whether intellectualism itself has any place in the modern world. If the internet is capable of propelling a man to the top of this list, what's to say that his ideas are his at all? At least we may be certain in one respect: the internet has brought on an era in which a person matters far less than the movement which propels his message.

Diablo 3

2008-07-11T11:02:00.001-07:00

It's probably just as well that my computer is capable of little more than word processing, web surfing, and music. If it were any more powerful I would be waiting with bated breath for Blizzard Studio's upcoming epic, Diablo III.

Finally, the FCC Grows a Spine

2008-07-11T10:36:00.001-07:00

The FCC is set to declare Comcast's packet-shaping shenanigans illegal and is set to impose sanctions on them for it. The first victory on the road to net neutrality? One can only hope.

FISA Voting

2008-07-09T11:30:00.001-07:00

After reading a lot of the discussion at firedoglake about the FISA renewal act that is currently being passed in the Senate, I think that a certain level of perspective is needed in order to calm the tempers of the people who are upset about the whole thing.

Many commentators are decrying this newly-expanded FISA as a harbinger of the coming US police state. What they need to realize is that the Senate is first and foremost a body of compromise. The House of Representatives has always been the firebrand, "will-o'-the-people" chamber that has rowdy debates and is not known for its measured, reasoned stances. The Senate has accordingly fashioned itself as a sort of counterbalance to the House and the White House.

To understand why the Senate leadership is accepting this FISA legislation is to understand on a macro-scale how the Bush white house functions and how it pursues its aims. A perfect example of this was its treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo bay. By insisting upon not granting these prisoners access to civilian courts while also flouting its responsibility to provide fair trials for these prisoners, the White House forced the hand of the Supreme Court. The SCOTUS did not want to grant these detainees access to habeas corpus, but this was a rebuke that was required against an administration that does not compromise its stances whatsoever.

Now, when the WH comes to Congress to get a new FISA bill, you can expect what kind of bill they are going to ask for, and you can also expect whether or not they will compromise their stance at all. The FISA needed to be renewed (at least in the eyes of the Government), and therefore Reid & Co. did what any rational-minded senator would do: they used FISA as a bargaining chip. They rightly assume that extended power to an executive that is already a lame-duck White House is an easy-to-swallow bitter pill if it will get the White House to pass legislation on housing relief and the environment. Bush's recent pledge to reduce greenhouse gasses by 50% as well as the revelations about Cheney's office doctoring EPA reports on climate change is not a coincidence. Bush's single-minded pursuit of 'national security' forced him to make these concessions, concessions which I believe outweigh the negative consequences of this new, expanded FISA.

Beck: Modern Guilt

2008-07-08T15:40:00.001-07:00

Beck's new album Modern Guilt is an album that tries to escape your notice. It's just over 40 minutes long, and each song is like a small, shrink-wrapped package containing a ready-made sandwich from Pret.

But that's not to say it's manufactured. DJ Danger Mouse's producing job is nothing short of brilliant. Most other reviews will lampoon Beck for continuing down the path toward incoherence--Radar calls Modern Guilt a record "without a mission statement." But for a reviewer who quite rightly ties Beck to break dancing, it's amazing that they arrive at this conclusion.

Beck is rock music's reaction to break dancing. And what Radar mistakenly believes is that Beck's great records, namely Odelay and Sea Change, both have something called 'mission statements'. A mission statement is not what these records have; it's something much simpler: Swagger. And what makes Modern Guilt so great, even if it is a bit incoherent and sometimes uninspiring, is that it is Beck at his best: with all the glorious slacker swagger that made him so lovable to us at first.

A break dancer doesn't announce his 'mission' when he hits the dance floor. He busts through the crowd and puts on moves. There's no beginning or finish to a break dancer's show; it's really a matter of zen and energy. Everyone knows when a dancer will be done. It's the same for Modern Guilt. You know this record can't last long, and you can even see Beck clumsily transitioning from song-to-song like a break dancer struggles to transform himself elegantly from one move to another completely unrelated one.

in my bedroom

2008-07-07T22:09:00.000-07:00

in my bedroom there are junebugs strewn about the floor
like some monstrous child has pulled them out of a bag and thrown them there

they lie on their backs, legs twisting around, grasping for their lives

2008-07-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

Observation: younger generations tend to repeat the mistakes of previous generations; especially if they are seen by the younger to be of little consequence (smoking, drinking, etc.).

Google Elections Mapping, and the Failure of Web 2.0

2008-07-06T16:43:00.001-07:00

Google's new election mapping tool is supposed to provide meaningful statistics about the upcoming election by showing which candidates are searched more often in every state nationwide. Interesting then that all 50 states appear to show Obama in the lead. There are several possible explanations for this:

Obama is going to win all 50 states.
People who are web-inclined and likely to investigate their political choices online are more liberal-leaning [my choice]
Obama is simply the more controversial candidate; people are more interested in finding out about Obama regardless of whether they want to vote for him.

Obviously option #1 is out. I'm surprised however that the conservative right has not yet leaped on Google for its liberal leanings. Obviously if Obama is the #1 most searched query on Google, it follows that people who spend more time online are more likely to be liberal. By force of argument Google's efforts to get the entire country online are a thinly-veiled liberal ruse to steal the election from hard-working conservatives.

of Betancourt's release

2008-07-04T16:14:00.001-07:00

The Times reports that it was actually a cover-up operation for the $20 million that was paid to FARC to secure her along with several other Americans' release.

eery update

2008-07-03T09:09:00.001-07:00

Since I've just reviewed the new Joy Division documentary, I thought it might bear mentioning that Ian Curtis' grave marker was stolen two nights ago.

Psychopharmacology article on Psylocybin

2008-07-01T14:13:00.001-07:00

Here's an article detailing the recent findings of a study at Johns Hopkins University about the spiritual effects of Psylocybin mushrooms.

w/o Narrow Leg Vintage Chino

2008-07-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

Back in New Mexico I'm waiting for the arrival of a pair of W/O Narrow Leg Vintage Chino pants that I ordered from Swell. I'm not going out on any limbs here but W/O makes some great-looking clothing and sells them at pretty fair prices.

I've been looking for a good slim-fit Chino for a while so I sprang for these. I don't intend upon turning this blog into a fashion / otherwise vain medium for my ramblings, so don't expect more posts like this. Slow news day, yeah?

Joy Division Review

2008-06-30T12:23:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw a screening of the new(ish) documentary on the seminal post-punk group Joy Division, aptly titled "Joy Division". I don't think I liked the editing or directing job on it--there were numerous uses of iTunes and iPods (not kidding) which sort of made the whole thing feel like a joke. The interviews were great, but not very insightful.

I think the best part of the movie was its effort to emulate the aesthetic and feel of 1970's Manchester. I think more than anything this treatment made me more receptive to Joy Division's sound, and also made me think a lot more about how certain political and social atmospheres can give rise to artistic movements like Joy Division.

I don't care much for the movie and can't recommend it to anyone but the most die-hard Joy Division fans, but I can recommend the music itself--there's no better way to learn about this timeless band than doing that.

Townhall

2008-06-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

Fred Thompson, the dinosaur who was never political, sent me an e-mail today advertising his new column in Town Hall, a new conservative magazine. The covers are great--one depicts a shining image of the statue of liberty set to a backdrop of brightly-lit clouds. Because New York is obviously too liberal a background for the mighty statue of liberty. Never mind as well that the statue of liberty more or less is a symbol of the U.S.'s liberal immigration policies (which the Republicans are staunchly running against in this election cycle). A choice quote from his e-mail:

"Primaries and elections sometimes do not turn out the way we might like. While campaigns cycles come to an end, the principles we fight for are timeless. These are the principles that inspired our Founding Fathers, and resulted in a Constitution that delineated the powers of the central government, established checks and balances among the branches of government and further diffused governmental power by a system of Federalism.

As conservatives, it is our job to ensure that these principles are maintained and preserved for future generations. But increasingly these values are under assault. In foreign affairs, our political opponents ignore our progress in Iraq and want to return America to isolationism. Economically, they call for dramatic tax hikes and increased government spending. Judicially, they support activist judges who strive to make the law rather than interpret it."

Yes, Fred. Hate to break it to you but Isolationism and populism are just as if not much more so the so-called 'principles' by the definitions that your particular brand of conservatism seeks to propagate (timeless, old). Isn't the American tradition bound up in anti-imperialism as well? By what criterion do you use to judge our foray into Iraq a truly 'conservative' version of outreach (though, in a way that is probably too ironic for Fred to understand, it is).

Thank god I can actually joke about this kind of tripe. A few years ago this would have had me genuinely scared.

market news

2008-06-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

Dow is down ~350 points this afternoon at closing. Watching the tickers I see anecdotal evidence that the only stocks performing well during this particularly bad time are commodities and a few tech firms. I think the most interesting part about the current financial crisis is that analogies to primitive society can apply to the stock market today, even though it is so complex as to require a super computer to model it.

Basically, there's a resource-grab going on. We're running out of natural resource supplies that will match demand. On the other hand we are trying as best we can to avert crisis by coming up with alternative ways to generate energy (hence technology firms are doing slightly less poorly than manufacturing and retail). Interesting times ahead. I predict an official recession by October.

Mauren Dowd: Worst Columnist Ever?

2008-06-25T17:52:00.001-07:00

Maureen Dowd continues to astound me with her aimless ramblings. After catching enough flack for launching a vicious attack on Hillary Clinton during the primaries, one would think that she would give her personal commentary a bit of rumination before clicking the 'post' button.

That is evidently not the case with her newest opinion piece, a petty sham of an opinion that addresses no real issues and targets the right people for all the wrong reasons--as well as doing damage to Barack Obama--her darling. Firstly, let me commend Maureen for calling out the Republicans on their idiotic charicatures of Obama. I could not be more on her side in calling out the Republicans on the inane and completely baseless picture they attempt to paint of Obama as an 'Elitist'. Dowd writes:

"He’s not Richie Rich, saved time and again by Daddy’s influence and Daddy’s friends, the one who got waved into Yale and Harvard and cushy business deals, who drank too much and snickered at the intellectuals and gave them snide nicknames.
Obama is the outsider who never really knew his dad and who grew up in modest circumstances, the kid who had to work hard to charm whites and build a life with blacks and step up to the smarty-pants set.
He might be smoking, but it would be at a cafe, hunched over a New York Times, an Atlantic magazine, his MacBook and some organic fruit-flavored tea, listening to Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” on his iPod."
Yes, because I'm sure the American voting public prefers its presidential candidates in the "hardworking bohemian" category rather than in the staid, completely tired, and oh-so-played "Elitist" category.

New in Music: Beach House

2008-06-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

Beach House has captured possession of my earphones for the past few days. They're a great two-piece from Baltimore that draws a lot of comparisons to the French two-piece Air, due to their first single, "Gila". Their austere, playful sound does indeed evoke the two Frenchmen (whose music also enjoys a prominent position in my library). However I think they sound a lot more like more dark, gloomy bands as the Cocteau Twins and The Cure. I think what makes this band work so well is their successful combination of positive, curious harmonies of bands like High Places with darker, solitary melodies. For lack of better terminology, the best way I can describe their sound is "doleful sexy". Any further pontification on my part will probably do little else than diminish the talent and impressiveness of this band, so instead of reading any further (that means stop, now--no, now!) you should just go check out their website (linked above) or their myspace.

why this blog is destined to failure

2008-06-24T12:12:00.001-07:00

Hilarious little piece at Slate detailing the difference between "web-writing" and "real-writing". From the article:

At home my boyfriend and I use a certain physical gesture as shorthand to describe it. To make it, extend your index fingers and your thumbs so that your hands resemble toy pistols. Then waggle them before you, like a dude in a cheesy Western, while you wink, dip your knees, and lopsidedly drawl, "Heyyy." The internet is always saying, "Heyyy." It is always welcoming you to the party; it is always patting you on the back to congratulate you for showing up. It says, You know me, in a collusive tone of voice, and Wanna hear something funny? and Didja see who else is here?

Christianity in China

2008-06-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

I have long maintained that of all the countries I have visited in the world (not that many, but a good few), China is the most like the United States both in attitude and personality. The Chicago Tribune is carrying a good piece about the rise of Christianity in China. It's a great, if a bit superficial perspective on the rise of this ideological movement in the face of rampant capitalism. It reminds me of exactly the sort of religious fervor that swept the United States when society was in the throes of an industrial revolution.

Even though I consider myself an atheist I think that Christianity will be more or less a good thing for China and the United States. There are many philosophically interesting aspects of the Christian faith, not least of which is the idea that God came to earth personally as Jesus Christ and subjected himself to man's evil in order that God's love for man and man's inherent repugnance of it is all the more apparent (this is why I find Judaism and Islam, for all their strong points, ideologically inferior).

Christianity is a good thing for a communist society which is bereft of any moral compass now that the true powers of market capitalism have been unleashed. I think that hopefully it will cause the Chinese people to take a greater stock in their individual influence on society and the planet as a whole (something that Western democracies like the US have long stopped instilling in its youth either by the abandonment of any sort of ideological education or through the neglect of a civic responsibility curriculum in public schools).

Obama's support of Ethanol

2008-06-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

the New York Times is running an article that details Senator Barack Obama's ties to the ethanol industry. It's hardly surprising that Obama has his own set of core supporters who he must rely on for a steady flow of cash. This is how presidential politics is played in the United States. However for a candidate who has espoused a sort of 'bottom-up' rhetoric in his campaign fundraising, it is somewhat surprising to see just how much he has lent his ear to the ethanol lobby. If he is elected (which I think he will be), he must see how much suffering ethanol subsidies are inflicting by robbing the global food supply of millions of pounds of food that normally would have been sold to the world's poor.

The Reality Tests

2008-06-22T10:47:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading a fascinating article about some recent experiments testing quantum mechanics in Vienna. "The Reality Tests" by Joshua Roebke is a pretty good (if a bit technical at points) account of what I think are the most stimulating philosophical questions that are raised by the current science of quantum mechanics.

A few professors in Vienna are undergoing several experiments by which they hope (or hoped at this point) to successfully test whether realism or locality held true with physical measurements. In short, quantum mechanics holds that reality (especially on a quantum level) is actually projected outwards by your tools of measurement or perception--in an awkward Berkeleyan manner (thus the old addage 'if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to see it, does it make a sound?' gains a lot more traction). Read the article if you can stomach the complicated terminology for a good perspective on this interesting philosophical and scientific debate.

"How an Emotion Became a Virtue" by Clifford Orwin

2008-06-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

I just read the entirety of Clifford Orwin's Marvelous "How an Emotion Became a Virtue –
it took some help from Rousseau and Montesquieu", and I can recommend it highly to anyone who is interested in the place that compassion holds in the current human consciousness as well as its historical understanding.

Clifford takes a more or less etymological tact in his argument; he points out cracks in the foundation of our current, "modern" ethics by examining the historical situation upon which our current morality is affixed. On the one it renders him unable to offer an alternative (however with such a monumental problem it can hardly be held against him), however for someone who is interested in the 'compassion politics' whose figurehead is the United Nations it is a wake-up call to examine the justifications that we assume true in order to arrive at this current state of affairs. Orwin concludes his essay:

Although Nietzsche often described himself (and has been described by others) as an immoralist, his ultimate objection to compassion was an ethical one. The core of humanity was its ambition to greatness, and all greatness depended on suffering. The modern project of compassion, then, taken as the elimination of suffering, was ipso facto a campaign against humanity as such in favor of a descent into the subhuman.

My summer reading list

2008-06-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Arguably one of the greatest works in the novel form, I find Tolstoy's epic inquiry into the human condition amazing in its depth and intricacy. When I read it, I feel like I'm listening to some amazing symphony of human form, and that inevitably, no matter how impossible it is to predict, the end of this novel will be a perfect and graceful accumulation of even the most minute interactions between the most insignificant of characters.

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche by H. L. Mencken
This book is a true classic. The "Sage of Baltimore" H. L. Mencken gives his two voluminous cents on the great opiner, Nietzsche. In this book is a hilarious biography of the man, followed by an interesting (if a bit antiquated and shallow) account of his philosophy.

The Aeneid by Vergil (Trans. Robert Fagles)
A classic that I read through in the original (if a bit halfheartedly and with liberal comprimise) in my last year of Latin instruction in high school. This new translation by Fagles is an absolute work of art, and a true pleasure to read in English. As a B+ Latin student whose translation abilities were really quite poor, it's almost better than reading it in the original (even if you lose that extra pinch of pretentiousness that comes with it).

The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy by Stanley Cavell
Haven't yet started this one yet but it's part of my preparation for senior thesis. I'm saving it for my two-week foray back to New Mexico in July.

blogs of awesomeness, part two

2008-06-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

I hope this blog will turn into something more substantive than simply links to other blogs (that are more substantive than this one). BibliOdyssey is a catalog of high-resolution scans of antique book illustrations, like the one here. It's an amazing website, which if I am not careful it is easy to spend hours on, simply looking in reverence at these amazing amazing drawings.

Take Ivy--or, when American fashion was awesome

2008-06-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

A Continuous Lean has a great post with scans of T. Hayashida's Take Ivy, an interesting, voyeuristic (and characteristically Japanese) photographic perspective on the fashion of 1960's Ivy league students.

Let's see which aspects of 1960's fashion have made it through to today.

Canvas tennis shoes, worn without socks
Tight jeans and overwrought shirts
[Stupid] Plaid shorts
Sweaters worn over collared shirts
Overwrought sense of 'carelessness' to each and every article of clothing worn