I've now read the last sentence of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. The book is 1208 pages in length (800 pages less than the House version of the new Health Insurance bill which Congress has 72 hours to read). It's taken me about three weeks since I got the book to read the sentence. Here it is:
"If any of the provinces of the British Empire cannot be made to contribute toward the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expence of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavor to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances" (1208).
The book was first published in 1776, and it's not Smith's fault that he hadn't read Hemingway. Still, I can't wait to read another sentence, but now have to get ready for the Halloween festivities (I'm dressing up as Harry Potter). I read books backwards, as usually the best part is on the last page: the book is really exciting so far! Some time around Christmas I'm scheduled to read another sentence. Stay tuned. I'm kind of a Slow Loris in reading lengthy classics. So far all that I've read of War and Peace is the title.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?
One of the ground rules of the Christian framework has to do with neighborliness.
State Farm sings, "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is there!"
And I suppose that in their own way, Obama-ites want GOVERNMENT to be there like a good neighbor.
But government cannot act from its heart, it has to act from regulations that are decided by a hierarchy. The magistrate sends out a request to bring in a certain criminal. The police officer cannot therefore decide to allow the criminal to go out of the goodness of his heart just because the officer happens to believe in neighborliness, and sees the criminal as a neighbor (maybe is, in fact, an actual neighbor).
What is a neighbor in LUTHER'S sense?
Is the enemy in combat our neighbor?
Perhaps so, but if the president as CIC orders us to take an enemy fortress, we cannot act in a neighborly manner to achieve this end. We must sometimes kill the defenders of the fortress.
The sword of war is necessary to maintain a greater peace.
Is someone who doesn't either fulfill or believe in the commandments nevertheless our neighbor?
Is the Marquis de Sade my neighbor?
I believe that marriage is the beginning of neighborliness, and that because Sade did not care about marriage, he was not my neighbor. Luther wrote, "The Holy Spirit declares there are three wonders: when brothers agree, when neighbors love each other, and when a man and a wife are at one. When I see a pair like that, I am as glad as if I were in a garden of roses" (cited in Bainton, 352).
The possibility of a covenant depends on mutually agreed upon rules. This in turn allows for neighborliness. Anyone who acts against these rules is not being neighborly.
Animals can be neighborly, and thus can be considered Lutheran. The Golden Lion Tamarin almost never fights within its group, and they remain monogamous once they choose a mate. Therefore, Golden Lion Tamarins are my neighbors.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
CAN ASIANS THINK? by Kishore Mahbubani
I picked up a book by Kishore Mahbubani entitled Can Asians Think? Understanding the Divide Between East -- Steerforth Press, 2002. I don't know how I came across the book. I was googling something else in Amazon.com when it popped up, and I bought it.
I liked the anti-PC title, and thought, it's true: they can't think! Buddhism is so depressing because it actually seems to ask you to turn OFF your mind, as if that's a good thing. I bought it in the hope that Mahbubani would make fun of Asia, which at least within poetry circles seems to me to have an exaggerated importance, with Confucius and Lao-tse taking the rightful place of Jesus Christ and Martin Luther.
Mahbubani is a "career diplomat and native of Singapore," it says on the back page.
I always read books backwards, so I started on the last page (most authors build up to their main point, and I want to get right at that, and then scroll forwards in the book, to see how they're getting there). The last essay is a two-page piece entitled "The Ten Commandments for Developing Countries in the Nineties."
Commandment Number 7:
"Thou shall scrub the idea of Karl Marx out of thy mind and replace them with the ideas of Adam Smith. The Germans have made their choice. Thou shall follow suit."
(p. 191).
The book is refreshingly clear and simple to read, and he tries to remain brief. About Pol Pot and company, he argues that Cambodians liked him not because he was killing half of them, but because he was at least for Cambodia. The Vietnamese had expansionisticalalitarianesque ideas, and this meant that the Cambodians wanted someone who would save Cambodia. This made sense to me.
Mahbubani argues that the Asian can think, and that we ought to listen. But there are some big infrastructure problems. Myanmar for instance doesn't have a free press. The Protestant Revolution's use of the printing press has never made it to the East. Even China blocks many internet sites. Asia boasts many countries without a free press. Before our intervention in Afghanistan, we didn't seem to care that Afghan women couldn't read, or that Algerians had a bigger clampdown on freedoms than the Myanmarese.
Mahbubani believes that much of western journalism is exactly the opiate of the people. Not only does the western press (he lives in NYC) report kerfuffles rather than the "real news," but when they do go after the real news, they spend lots of ink on the president's choice of a new dog, or his wife's planting turnips with the cute kids, or years of ink on an affair by some candidate and his staffer, and Mahbubani actually cites Christ, "Let the one without sin cast the first stone."
He says the Philippines (among Asian countries) have in fact had the greatest freedom of the press, but they are still a backward country.
He said many western journalists backed the communist regime in North Vietnam, which led to a disaster for the people of South Vietnam. Journalists went nuts when Tiananmen Square took place, but said nothing while 50 million were killed in the Cultural Revolution. He said the western press depends on feeding frenzies where they all cover what the others are covering, once they sense money in a story.
We assume in the west that freedom of speech should be a guaranteed right, and that it is what makes us a better people.
But Mahbubani thinks the west is drifting into moral chaos and that our journalists are leading the way. Since the decline of church attendance in the 1950s "The United States has undertaken a massive social experiment, tearing down social institution after social institution that restrained the individual. The results have been disastrous. Since 1960 the US population has increased 41 percent while violent crime has risen by 560 percent, single-mother births by 419 percent, divorce rates by 300 percent, and children living in single-parent homes by 300 percent. This is massive social decay. Many a society shudders at the prospect of this happening on its shores. But instead of travelling overseas with humility, Americans confidently preach the virtues of unfettered individual freedom, blithely ignoring the social consequences" (97).
"Most Asian societies would be shocked by the sight of gay-rights activists on their streets. And in most of them, if popular referendums were held, they would vote overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty as well as censorship of pornography" (79).
The book is an eye-opener. Mahbubani writes clearly and well. His essays have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Asiaweek, Terrorism, among others, and was originally published in Singapore.
The book isn't exactly what I had hoped for when I saw the jarring title. It's still a very good read that de-centers the western viewpoint and provides a rich and new perspective.
I liked the anti-PC title, and thought, it's true: they can't think! Buddhism is so depressing because it actually seems to ask you to turn OFF your mind, as if that's a good thing. I bought it in the hope that Mahbubani would make fun of Asia, which at least within poetry circles seems to me to have an exaggerated importance, with Confucius and Lao-tse taking the rightful place of Jesus Christ and Martin Luther.
Mahbubani is a "career diplomat and native of Singapore," it says on the back page.
I always read books backwards, so I started on the last page (most authors build up to their main point, and I want to get right at that, and then scroll forwards in the book, to see how they're getting there). The last essay is a two-page piece entitled "The Ten Commandments for Developing Countries in the Nineties."
Commandment Number 7:
"Thou shall scrub the idea of Karl Marx out of thy mind and replace them with the ideas of Adam Smith. The Germans have made their choice. Thou shall follow suit."
(p. 191).
The book is refreshingly clear and simple to read, and he tries to remain brief. About Pol Pot and company, he argues that Cambodians liked him not because he was killing half of them, but because he was at least for Cambodia. The Vietnamese had expansionisticalalitarianesque ideas, and this meant that the Cambodians wanted someone who would save Cambodia. This made sense to me.
Mahbubani argues that the Asian can think, and that we ought to listen. But there are some big infrastructure problems. Myanmar for instance doesn't have a free press. The Protestant Revolution's use of the printing press has never made it to the East. Even China blocks many internet sites. Asia boasts many countries without a free press. Before our intervention in Afghanistan, we didn't seem to care that Afghan women couldn't read, or that Algerians had a bigger clampdown on freedoms than the Myanmarese.
Mahbubani believes that much of western journalism is exactly the opiate of the people. Not only does the western press (he lives in NYC) report kerfuffles rather than the "real news," but when they do go after the real news, they spend lots of ink on the president's choice of a new dog, or his wife's planting turnips with the cute kids, or years of ink on an affair by some candidate and his staffer, and Mahbubani actually cites Christ, "Let the one without sin cast the first stone."
He says the Philippines (among Asian countries) have in fact had the greatest freedom of the press, but they are still a backward country.
He said many western journalists backed the communist regime in North Vietnam, which led to a disaster for the people of South Vietnam. Journalists went nuts when Tiananmen Square took place, but said nothing while 50 million were killed in the Cultural Revolution. He said the western press depends on feeding frenzies where they all cover what the others are covering, once they sense money in a story.
We assume in the west that freedom of speech should be a guaranteed right, and that it is what makes us a better people.
But Mahbubani thinks the west is drifting into moral chaos and that our journalists are leading the way. Since the decline of church attendance in the 1950s "The United States has undertaken a massive social experiment, tearing down social institution after social institution that restrained the individual. The results have been disastrous. Since 1960 the US population has increased 41 percent while violent crime has risen by 560 percent, single-mother births by 419 percent, divorce rates by 300 percent, and children living in single-parent homes by 300 percent. This is massive social decay. Many a society shudders at the prospect of this happening on its shores. But instead of travelling overseas with humility, Americans confidently preach the virtues of unfettered individual freedom, blithely ignoring the social consequences" (97).
"Most Asian societies would be shocked by the sight of gay-rights activists on their streets. And in most of them, if popular referendums were held, they would vote overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty as well as censorship of pornography" (79).
The book is an eye-opener. Mahbubani writes clearly and well. His essays have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Asiaweek, Terrorism, among others, and was originally published in Singapore.
The book isn't exactly what I had hoped for when I saw the jarring title. It's still a very good read that de-centers the western viewpoint and provides a rich and new perspective.
Whistling in the Dark
I remember when I was in about 4th grade my dad taught me how to whistle in the kitchen when my baby brother was asleep in a back room. The whole family was egging me on. Suddenly I whistled as loud as a train and woke up the baby and everybody was mad at me.
Now my nose whistles involuntarily, and nobody appreciates that, either, especially when they're trying to sleep.
As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of all the possible links I could make: Whistler (painter), whistle-stop campaign trips, blowing the whistle (on Lyme funding), whistling in the dark, whistling as an act that feminists deplore, the great intro to the Andy Griffith show...
Althouse had a neat reference yesterday to the fact that there aren't any great whistlers any more.
She hasn't heard my nose at night.
Now my nose whistles involuntarily, and nobody appreciates that, either, especially when they're trying to sleep.
As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of all the possible links I could make: Whistler (painter), whistle-stop campaign trips, blowing the whistle (on Lyme funding), whistling in the dark, whistling as an act that feminists deplore, the great intro to the Andy Griffith show...
Althouse had a neat reference yesterday to the fact that there aren't any great whistlers any more.
She hasn't heard my nose at night.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Golden Lion Tamarin Monkey
The Golden Lion Tamarin Monkey lives in monogamous pairs in lifelong heterosexual bonds along a very tiny strip of the Brazilian coast. About 1000 copies of the animal remain in the wild. Another 500 copies exist in zoos.
The pressure of capital continues to destroy what remains of their habitat. People scream that they must therefore stop capital and so they start screaming let's go socialist, or let's go communist. Both systems are capitalist, but communism is one in which the government controls all the capital (in its most extreme forms -- it is forbidden to trade anything on a private basis, as only the government has the right to economic activity). Socialism redistributes the money of the harder-working population to the lazybones who'd prefer to watch Reality TV.
But they are both still capitalism. Just capitalism that doesn't work very well.
Which is better for the environment? China dumps tons and tons of mercury into the oceans, and has no regulatory aspect. The Soviet Union under the Stalinists gave us nightmares such as the drying up of the Aral Sea (once the fourth largest sea in the world).
The Golden Lion Tamarin monkey has a mane like a lion, but is rather gentle. They never fight one another, and spend their time in trees, eating, dreaming, and completely clueless as to their nearly extinct status, and unable to tell us whether they prefer communism or laissez-faire capitalism, or some kind of socialist blend of the two.
One of the things I like about these monkeys is their monogamy. In the Philadelphia Zoo, they don't even cage them. They have a jumble of trees as their habitat, and they know to stay inside that jumble (about the size of a traffic circle). They have some kind of inner sense to stay put, and they do. Their boundaries are interior ones.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Black Book of Communism
If I could have everyone in American academia read one book, it would be The Black Book of Communism. Every Democrat should read it. Jacques has brought it up here before.
Here's a short take from the Amazon.com page:
Amazon.com Review
When it was first published in France in 1997, Le livre noir du Communisme touched off a storm of controversy that continues to rage today. Even some of his contributors shied away from chief editor Stéphane Courtois's conclusion that Communism, in all its many forms, was morally no better than Nazism; the two totalitarian systems, Courtois argued, were far better at killing than at governing, as the world learned to its sorrow.
Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims. This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident, but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them. Courtois and his contributors document Communism's crimes in numbing detail, moving from country to country, revolution to revolution. The figures they offer will likely provoke argument, if not among cliometricians then among the ideologically inclined. So, too, will Courtois's suggestion that those who hold Lenin, Trotsky, and Ho Chi Minh in anything other than contempt are dupes, witting or not, of a murderous school of thought--one that, while in retreat around the world, still has many adherents. A thought-provoking work of history and social criticism, The Black Book of Communism fully merits the broadest possible readership and discussion. --Gregory McNamee
If I were able to slip a book into Obama's hands (as he let Chavez do at one meeting) it would be the Black Book of Communism. Ditto for his propaganda minister, Anita Dumb-Dumb.
Here's a short take from the Amazon.com page:
Amazon.com Review
When it was first published in France in 1997, Le livre noir du Communisme touched off a storm of controversy that continues to rage today. Even some of his contributors shied away from chief editor Stéphane Courtois's conclusion that Communism, in all its many forms, was morally no better than Nazism; the two totalitarian systems, Courtois argued, were far better at killing than at governing, as the world learned to its sorrow.
Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims. This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident, but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them. Courtois and his contributors document Communism's crimes in numbing detail, moving from country to country, revolution to revolution. The figures they offer will likely provoke argument, if not among cliometricians then among the ideologically inclined. So, too, will Courtois's suggestion that those who hold Lenin, Trotsky, and Ho Chi Minh in anything other than contempt are dupes, witting or not, of a murderous school of thought--one that, while in retreat around the world, still has many adherents. A thought-provoking work of history and social criticism, The Black Book of Communism fully merits the broadest possible readership and discussion. --Gregory McNamee
If I were able to slip a book into Obama's hands (as he let Chavez do at one meeting) it would be the Black Book of Communism. Ditto for his propaganda minister, Anita Dumb-Dumb.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
LOVE AS LEGITIMATION OF AN ACTIVITY
"Love" is often used as legitimation.
I fell in love with someone else (used to legitimate leaving a marriage).
But I love it! (used to legitimate eating too much fudge).
Is love legitimate?
I don't think it's sufficient. If someone were to say, "I love to rob banks," almost everyone except ACORN executives would say, but that's no legitimation!
Love is not sufficient for legitimation.
What we ask of any activity is that it not hurt anyone else, and that it not hurt yourself. You are not permitted to commit suicide (it's not a capital crime, but you can be locked up).
You are not permitted to shoot guns in town limits (even if you love it).
You are not supposed to shoot intravenous drugs like heroin (even if you love it).
If the way you love someone else hurts them, you can't.
But are we allowed to do something that doesn't either help or hurt others?
Some people waste time building model railroads. This isn't necessarily good. They could instead be serving soup to the poor. And yet, we allow them to take over the basement of a community building and rig up fantastic road beds with tiny buildings spread over hundreds of square feet, while grown men with beards hold midgets by the waist as they lean out, trying to put up tiny telephone poles and little billboards advertising a shaving cream from the 1920s.
There are people who waste time watching Spongebob (ask my kids). They could be raking leaves, or mowing the lawn.
People waste time reading romance novels, watching Sumo, drinking ale, doing Sudoku puzzles, driving around looking at leaves, shopping for antiques, fishing, bird watching, fondly looking through travel magazines, watching weather patterns on TWC, getting into Guinness Book of World Records by sitting up in a tree for two years, scribbling doodles on notepads while whistling pop songs (often badly), collecting baseball cards, or sleeping past eight hours.
All of these are permitted, and hobby magazines exist for just about any and every one of these.
People blow all kinds of time exercising their first amendment freedom by arguing on blogs, and even calling one another out, as if it's the public square.
AIDS is in a small fraction of the community: primarily in the anal sex and drug using communities. The community is well less than half of the American population, and yet it costs the CDC over 50% of its funding.
I find it difficult to see these activities as legitimate. One is not legal, and one is legal. Does the community have the right to declare dangerous activities illegal, or at least to not bless them in churches? Or is that just hateful and oppressive?
I fell in love with someone else (used to legitimate leaving a marriage).
But I love it! (used to legitimate eating too much fudge).
Is love legitimate?
I don't think it's sufficient. If someone were to say, "I love to rob banks," almost everyone except ACORN executives would say, but that's no legitimation!
Love is not sufficient for legitimation.
What we ask of any activity is that it not hurt anyone else, and that it not hurt yourself. You are not permitted to commit suicide (it's not a capital crime, but you can be locked up).
You are not permitted to shoot guns in town limits (even if you love it).
You are not supposed to shoot intravenous drugs like heroin (even if you love it).
If the way you love someone else hurts them, you can't.
But are we allowed to do something that doesn't either help or hurt others?
Some people waste time building model railroads. This isn't necessarily good. They could instead be serving soup to the poor. And yet, we allow them to take over the basement of a community building and rig up fantastic road beds with tiny buildings spread over hundreds of square feet, while grown men with beards hold midgets by the waist as they lean out, trying to put up tiny telephone poles and little billboards advertising a shaving cream from the 1920s.
There are people who waste time watching Spongebob (ask my kids). They could be raking leaves, or mowing the lawn.
People waste time reading romance novels, watching Sumo, drinking ale, doing Sudoku puzzles, driving around looking at leaves, shopping for antiques, fishing, bird watching, fondly looking through travel magazines, watching weather patterns on TWC, getting into Guinness Book of World Records by sitting up in a tree for two years, scribbling doodles on notepads while whistling pop songs (often badly), collecting baseball cards, or sleeping past eight hours.
All of these are permitted, and hobby magazines exist for just about any and every one of these.
People blow all kinds of time exercising their first amendment freedom by arguing on blogs, and even calling one another out, as if it's the public square.
AIDS is in a small fraction of the community: primarily in the anal sex and drug using communities. The community is well less than half of the American population, and yet it costs the CDC over 50% of its funding.
I find it difficult to see these activities as legitimate. One is not legal, and one is legal. Does the community have the right to declare dangerous activities illegal, or at least to not bless them in churches? Or is that just hateful and oppressive?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Child with Lyme
Lyme Disease receives a scant .02% of funding from the Center for Disease Control.
Nearly 3 million people have the disease in this country. Many of those are children. The reason they got the disease? They were playing outside. They get sick for decades, and lose all the quality of their lives. Lyme is not able to be cured at present. With the scanty funding it receives, it is likely to be a disease that continues to grow.
Meanwhile, more than 50% of the CDC's funding goes to combatting sexual diseases. While Lyme Disease gets about 6 million dollars a year, AIDS gets 20 billion dollars from the CDC. What causes AIDS? It's because of the Sexual Revolution and the drug fascination of the 1960s, and the notion that "if it feels good, do it."
The progressives love sex. Their famous phrase was, "Make love, not war." The result? The Center for Disease Control spends more than 50% of its budget on sexual diseases. Whatever happened to evolution? Should people who are reckless die off? If you can only save one, a child who got sick for playing outside, and an adult who shared needles to inject heroin in his eyeballs after having rough, reckless, anonymous sex, which would you choose? The CDC has chosen the reckless sex and drug addict.
A child will go skipping around the block, and play on the swings, after doing her homework. A tick gets on her leg, and she gets sick. The CDC could care less. Meanwhile, an adult will lie down in bushes in a public park and share a needle, and then get anal sex from twenty partners. This results in AIDS. It cannot be said that the CDC does not have empathy. But why is all the empathy for one group?
I'd like to know why the CwL has been thrown under the bus by the CDC.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Anita Dunn: Maoist!
Anita Dunn is an interim White House Director of Communications. There's been a kerfluffle between her and FoxNews. It looks like she's going to lose, and I will bet that she gets thrown under the bus in a week or two as a result.
I've long suspected, amidst great heckling, that the American left is Maoist. They use many of the same tactics, and many of the same phrases. Why should this surprise anyone? Simone de Beauvoir was a Maoist, and her book, The Long March, is practically the blueprint of the feminist movement.
Julia Kristeva was a Maoist.
SDS was Maoist.
Anita Dunn is almost certainly steeped in that tradition. Generally, the left tries to hide this, but it doesn't fool me. Which is not to say that nothing fools me. Anita Dunn apparently gave this speech in front of a group of Episcopalian schoolkids in the DC area. Among the things she said (I got this off the Wikipedia page about her) in which she's giving the kids life lessons:
"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Zedong and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is: you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices, they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this, against all of the odds against you?" And Mao Zedong said, you know, "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine." And think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don't have to follow other peoples choices and paths. Ok? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war, you lay out your own path, you figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definition define how good you are internally, you fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path."
That phrase: path. Where have I heard that before? What does it evoke? Oh yes, the Shining Path of Peru. They were led by an obscure psycho-path and philosophy professor. Guttman, Gussman? Can't remember his name. At one time many academic Marxists would have known this group, and been for them in their fight against "capitalist oppression" in Peru. Now Ms. Dunn claims she was only joking with the students by using Mao's name, and seemingly referring to this Maoist guerilla group. I suppose we shall shortly see who gets the last laugh. I'll bet on Beck, and I'll bet anything that Obama too has "red" Mao's little red book, and took much of it to heart.
Why doesn't he just admit it so the rest of us can stop reading between the lines? Could this be also why he's refused to meet with the Dalai Lama? Are all the dots starting to connect? It may be that the entire left doesn't realize that their ideology is Maoist. Glenn Beck shall have to supply this information for them!
I've long suspected, amidst great heckling, that the American left is Maoist. They use many of the same tactics, and many of the same phrases. Why should this surprise anyone? Simone de Beauvoir was a Maoist, and her book, The Long March, is practically the blueprint of the feminist movement.
Julia Kristeva was a Maoist.
SDS was Maoist.
Anita Dunn is almost certainly steeped in that tradition. Generally, the left tries to hide this, but it doesn't fool me. Which is not to say that nothing fools me. Anita Dunn apparently gave this speech in front of a group of Episcopalian schoolkids in the DC area. Among the things she said (I got this off the Wikipedia page about her) in which she's giving the kids life lessons:
"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Zedong and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is: you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices, they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this, against all of the odds against you?" And Mao Zedong said, you know, "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine." And think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don't have to follow other peoples choices and paths. Ok? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war, you lay out your own path, you figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definition define how good you are internally, you fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path."
That phrase: path. Where have I heard that before? What does it evoke? Oh yes, the Shining Path of Peru. They were led by an obscure psycho-path and philosophy professor. Guttman, Gussman? Can't remember his name. At one time many academic Marxists would have known this group, and been for them in their fight against "capitalist oppression" in Peru. Now Ms. Dunn claims she was only joking with the students by using Mao's name, and seemingly referring to this Maoist guerilla group. I suppose we shall shortly see who gets the last laugh. I'll bet on Beck, and I'll bet anything that Obama too has "red" Mao's little red book, and took much of it to heart.
Why doesn't he just admit it so the rest of us can stop reading between the lines? Could this be also why he's refused to meet with the Dalai Lama? Are all the dots starting to connect? It may be that the entire left doesn't realize that their ideology is Maoist. Glenn Beck shall have to supply this information for them!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Visit to Bethesda, MD
Last weekend we went to Bethesda, MARYLAND for a family get-together. Since my dad died in the spring, we realize that our time together as a family won't last forever.
My sister-in-law rented a big house in Bethesda. The exact property was located through a company called www.vrbo.com
If you want to see the house, you have to put in property number 261044 in the property finder.
Then you'll see the house. It was massive. Worth over a million dollars. Oddly it had an oak tree towering over it and when the wind shook the tree, acorns rattled down on the house. I think the going rate for a weekend is about 500 dollars at this property. Which was reasonable! And the owner was quite reasonable.
The house had broadband internet (wireless, so at any one time there were usually three lap-tops going), and there were lots of bathrooms, and a great kitchen.
And Bethesda is wealthy. According to Wikipedia, "Bethesda is one of the most affluent and highly educated locales in the country, placing first in Forbes list of America's most educated small towns[1] and eleventh on CNNMoney.com's list of top-earning American towns.[2]"
You can drive down Wisconsin Avenue and see a Nieman Marcus, two Trader Joes, and hundreds and hundreds of other shops, not one of which looks too shabby.
But the funny part is that when we were packing up a man from across the street said to us, did you have a good stay? I said yes, and then I asked him why the street was called EXFAIR ROAD. Had there been a fair there at one time? He was a young urban professional with two daughters in a red wagon. He said, "Exfair, Exeter, Exington, it's just a fancy-sounding name." Then I asked him if the house had a certain style, whether the style had a name. Because his house had the exact same style. (Look it up if you feel like it.) He said, "It's probably some style."
He looked completely disgusted by the whole charade of styles and names.
My sister-in-law rented a big house in Bethesda. The exact property was located through a company called www.vrbo.com
If you want to see the house, you have to put in property number 261044 in the property finder.
Then you'll see the house. It was massive. Worth over a million dollars. Oddly it had an oak tree towering over it and when the wind shook the tree, acorns rattled down on the house. I think the going rate for a weekend is about 500 dollars at this property. Which was reasonable! And the owner was quite reasonable.
The house had broadband internet (wireless, so at any one time there were usually three lap-tops going), and there were lots of bathrooms, and a great kitchen.
And Bethesda is wealthy. According to Wikipedia, "Bethesda is one of the most affluent and highly educated locales in the country, placing first in Forbes list of America's most educated small towns[1] and eleventh on CNNMoney.com's list of top-earning American towns.[2]"
You can drive down Wisconsin Avenue and see a Nieman Marcus, two Trader Joes, and hundreds and hundreds of other shops, not one of which looks too shabby.
But the funny part is that when we were packing up a man from across the street said to us, did you have a good stay? I said yes, and then I asked him why the street was called EXFAIR ROAD. Had there been a fair there at one time? He was a young urban professional with two daughters in a red wagon. He said, "Exfair, Exeter, Exington, it's just a fancy-sounding name." Then I asked him if the house had a certain style, whether the style had a name. Because his house had the exact same style. (Look it up if you feel like it.) He said, "It's probably some style."
He looked completely disgusted by the whole charade of styles and names.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Patterns as the Goal of Sciences and Arts
When I talk with my science students about freshman composition, they always wonder, why do we have to learn how to write about poems, or about beauty? We are scientists. We are interested in other stuff.
But finding patterns is what's common to mathematicians and poets, and is why poetry and mathematics are kinds of writing that have the same basic work to do.
Let's say there is a field of dandelions and people living in the area have a new kind of tuberculosis. The field of dandelions may or may not be germane to the tuberculosis. A scientist say can't find the basis of the new form of tuberculosis. No one has ever thought dandelions and tuberculosis were linked. But the smart scientist makes a mental risk and says, the two are linked. Then she checks all the outbreaks of the new form of tuberculosis and tries to find a mathematically stable model that shows that prevalence of dandelions is linked to prevalence of the new form of tuberculosis. If that case can be made, then we can level the dandelion fields, or find something in the dandelions that is causing the tuberculosis, and interrupt it with a pharmaceutical for those at risk.
Out of an apparently unlimited number of vectors, the scientist has discovered a pattern.
The poet does something similar in that the poet is trying to find new patterns, and put them into a new field of writing, to show that a previously unseen pattern exists, and then the poem will clarify that new pattern for the reader. They may make it clear. Poems are about human happiness, and this is what the scientist is typically after, too -- maximizing human happiness.
Here's a poem from Corso:
I DREAM IN THE DAYTIME
I dream in daytime
much too somber
to greet the angels
at my velvet-shredded door
They enter salt
they pour my milk
they sprinkle white flies on the floor
I cringe my sink
I gloom my stove
They leave me pink
I dip my glove
from Elegiac Feelings American, p. 111
The poem is about a depressed person, who nevertheless discovers happiness in the last lines. The angels have left him pink (pink, I think, symbolizes happiness, as compared to the dreary color of white, and then black, with which the poem opens).
The poem appears at first to be nonsense to the reader, perhaps. But there is a clear rhyme scheme (very odd off-rhymes).
The reader has to try to discover the pattern. The pattern is weird: first the white things, salt, flies, and milk. The only thing that links them is the color white!
But angels are bringing in these things!
Then, a sink and a stove appear. A black mood. I cringe my sink/ I gloom my stove.
Finally, the pinkness appears.
The pattern is something like the alchemical color scheme in which first white, then black, and finally pink (some scholars claim that happiness was the actual goal of those alchemists who tried to turn things into gold). That gold represented happiness.
And maybe that's his dream?
Poetry attempts to find patterns of happiness, and then to reveal these patterns to the reader. Unlike science, which may discover something that creates disease, poetry may discover the reason for something to be beautiful (beauty creates happiness rather directly) and the poet has to find a new pattern of happiness.
Even misery can be beautiful.
Finding a pattern in nature, in a poem, or in life, and representing it either through math, or through art, reveal to us something hopefully worthwhile (which means, linked to our happiness).
Music also tries to find new patterns, which can be delightful in themselves.
At any rate, it's not much a finished theory. It's just a notion. Patterns are what links the arts and sciences? Some people are better at one or the other. But to be good at either one can be valuable.
Patterns of significance are what we are looking for. Shakespeare is of course better than Corso. And the truly great pattern finders in mathematics are better than most high school math teachers at finding odd patterns in numbers and revealing them. The quality that a pattern reveals is what determines the greatness of the poet or the scientist.
But finding patterns is what's common to mathematicians and poets, and is why poetry and mathematics are kinds of writing that have the same basic work to do.
Let's say there is a field of dandelions and people living in the area have a new kind of tuberculosis. The field of dandelions may or may not be germane to the tuberculosis. A scientist say can't find the basis of the new form of tuberculosis. No one has ever thought dandelions and tuberculosis were linked. But the smart scientist makes a mental risk and says, the two are linked. Then she checks all the outbreaks of the new form of tuberculosis and tries to find a mathematically stable model that shows that prevalence of dandelions is linked to prevalence of the new form of tuberculosis. If that case can be made, then we can level the dandelion fields, or find something in the dandelions that is causing the tuberculosis, and interrupt it with a pharmaceutical for those at risk.
Out of an apparently unlimited number of vectors, the scientist has discovered a pattern.
The poet does something similar in that the poet is trying to find new patterns, and put them into a new field of writing, to show that a previously unseen pattern exists, and then the poem will clarify that new pattern for the reader. They may make it clear. Poems are about human happiness, and this is what the scientist is typically after, too -- maximizing human happiness.
Here's a poem from Corso:
I DREAM IN THE DAYTIME
I dream in daytime
much too somber
to greet the angels
at my velvet-shredded door
They enter salt
they pour my milk
they sprinkle white flies on the floor
I cringe my sink
I gloom my stove
They leave me pink
I dip my glove
from Elegiac Feelings American, p. 111
The poem is about a depressed person, who nevertheless discovers happiness in the last lines. The angels have left him pink (pink, I think, symbolizes happiness, as compared to the dreary color of white, and then black, with which the poem opens).
The poem appears at first to be nonsense to the reader, perhaps. But there is a clear rhyme scheme (very odd off-rhymes).
The reader has to try to discover the pattern. The pattern is weird: first the white things, salt, flies, and milk. The only thing that links them is the color white!
But angels are bringing in these things!
Then, a sink and a stove appear. A black mood. I cringe my sink/ I gloom my stove.
Finally, the pinkness appears.
The pattern is something like the alchemical color scheme in which first white, then black, and finally pink (some scholars claim that happiness was the actual goal of those alchemists who tried to turn things into gold). That gold represented happiness.
And maybe that's his dream?
Poetry attempts to find patterns of happiness, and then to reveal these patterns to the reader. Unlike science, which may discover something that creates disease, poetry may discover the reason for something to be beautiful (beauty creates happiness rather directly) and the poet has to find a new pattern of happiness.
Even misery can be beautiful.
Finding a pattern in nature, in a poem, or in life, and representing it either through math, or through art, reveal to us something hopefully worthwhile (which means, linked to our happiness).
Music also tries to find new patterns, which can be delightful in themselves.
At any rate, it's not much a finished theory. It's just a notion. Patterns are what links the arts and sciences? Some people are better at one or the other. But to be good at either one can be valuable.
Patterns of significance are what we are looking for. Shakespeare is of course better than Corso. And the truly great pattern finders in mathematics are better than most high school math teachers at finding odd patterns in numbers and revealing them. The quality that a pattern reveals is what determines the greatness of the poet or the scientist.
FATHERS IN CHILDREN'S LIVES
The Washington Post actually published an article that says it's parents and not race that matters in terms of a child's success.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101503477.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
I owe the link to Ed Baker.
Conservative magazines and commentators have been all over this for decades. Now it seems that the left might start to think about the role of parents.
Among my own students I already see it. Black males father kids and don't even bother to go see them when they are born. White males father kids and drop out of school and get a job, and marry the woman, and are obsessed with the kid. They become concerned with how to get and keep a job, and every time I see them, they talk about their kids.
Apparently not having a dad lowers your IQ by about ten points. It's the lack of input a dad can bring.
Feminists of course won't want to hear about it.
And race advocates won't, either.
And yet, all the statistics are there.
Asians have a very modest divorce rate. It's about two percent.
Whites are now up to about 35%.
Blacks have a disastrous rate. About 82% of black kids don't have a nuclear family. Many don't even know who their dad is, or may have met him only once, or twice, and the dad didn't even pay attention to them, obsessed instead with their latest girlfriend, or the track, or some kind of disturbing substance.
Even our president barely knew his own father.
Families matter, and fathers matter. We have an obsession with sex, but very little concern with the outcome of sex. People want to be able to off the children, so that they can party on. This is murder, of course. But it's one way to take care of the problem.
There are others. Farming the kids out to adoptive parents is another answer. These kids are more likely to commit crimes than any other group. Prisons are packed with orphans. They are acting out their feeling of rejection through murder and crime. Perhaps it's also the case that these kids simply don't have any idea of what's right or wrong, since there is no one to help them make these distinctions. No one to take them to church, or to talk with them about God and the ten commandments.
Somehow I think one's own parents are the only ones who can truly relate to a kid. Genetics has a big part to do with what a person is, and kids are chips off the old block. Without parents, a kid may not have a reliable sense of who they are and what kinds of talents they may have that they can contribute to a community, much less how to tap those talents and channel them in a creative way.
The black family has been in a state of chaos partially because the only way for the men to survive under slavery was to not get too close to their families, since their Episcopalian masters could sell them at a profit without any concern for their feelings. Probably only those who had little or no feelings could bear to be away from their wives and children. So perhaps this has created a longstanding mess.
Even the president has said "it only takes a few minutes a day" to be a father. In actuality, it takes hours, day after day. But Obama didn't have an adequate model, and probably doesn't really have any idea what it means to be a dad. You have to play sports with your kids, have dinner with them, help them with their homework, wake up at night to comfort them when they have bad dreams, and read to them. That's at least the basics.
People who grow up without that are going to be angry, dislocated, and a mess. They may think the government will be able to substitute as a parent.
But nothing will substitute for an actual caring parent.
Meanwhile, the wounded among us continue on. Orphans, the neglected, the battered, and the unwanted. Instead of race, gender, and class, and the sexual revolution, we ought to focus on the family.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Nothing to Say
Yesterday I had so many blogposts I could do it took all my strength to stop.
Today I have nothing at all to say, and am somewhat relieved.
We are on our way to watch a melodrama about the history of the tiny town of Bovina (pop. 300) over in their tiny town hall.
It was written by their librarian, Marjorie (who used to work at Studio 54).
I'm grading papers on the topic of Law and Beauty (interesting to read about a singer named Rihanna, who got beat up by her boyfriend Chris Brown, but still loves him).
She had a hit called Umbrella, which isn't exactly watchable.
My friend Gary Mayer is in the Bovina Production. Ok, off we go.
I hope I have nothing to say for a day or two. It's a huge burden to have to say something.
Meanwhile, I'm going to grade three more papers. Here's how the next one starts:
"The game of baseball is said to be America's game."
Today I have nothing at all to say, and am somewhat relieved.
We are on our way to watch a melodrama about the history of the tiny town of Bovina (pop. 300) over in their tiny town hall.
It was written by their librarian, Marjorie (who used to work at Studio 54).
I'm grading papers on the topic of Law and Beauty (interesting to read about a singer named Rihanna, who got beat up by her boyfriend Chris Brown, but still loves him).
She had a hit called Umbrella, which isn't exactly watchable.
My friend Gary Mayer is in the Bovina Production. Ok, off we go.
I hope I have nothing to say for a day or two. It's a huge burden to have to say something.
Meanwhile, I'm going to grade three more papers. Here's how the next one starts:
"The game of baseball is said to be America's game."
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Artwork Defined
Browsing, I came across this on GM's blog. Art is defined on October 5th:
"ART IS WORK OF QUALITY MADE FOR THE INDULGENCE OF OTHERS."
He then goes through the wording and dispenses with caviling over 'is' and 'of' as Clintonesque.
It's work, he says, which means that someone must have made it, and says this is perhaps the reason we don't buy Duchamp's Fountain as being serious (I think this is astute). Quality, too, I will accept.
I like the brevity of the definition. "Indulgence"? My Collegiate Webster's offers, "to treat oneself with excessive leniency, generosity, or consideration, to take unrestrained pleasure in, to show undue favor to a person or his wishes."
Art ought to in some way challenge the reader at least as much as a crossword puzzle.
Indulgence sounds more like a lap dance.
I think GM's being deliberately provocative with the word, "indulgence." Can GM be deliberately provocative?
The Catholics sold indulgences for remission of purgatorial punishment, in order to allow penitents to be pardoned through commercial means. But I think he means more in the sense of "to yield to the desire of" which is something along the lines of a b.j., rather than in the ecclesiastical sense.
I sought alternatives and thought "interest" but the word is not interesting. And I thought "entertainment" but that's bad, too.
Entertainment can mean schlock. I think all these terms militate against "quality."
The quality of a thing that arouses interest, concern, and a sense of contemplation about the nature of art itself. That word "indulgence" is deliberately a mistake, I think, that forces us to try to correct it. Indulgence refers to an inferior emotional state.
Once GM brings in Clinton he perhaps started to think in terms of abusive power relationships and cheap sex with interns. If so, why not just bring up "intercourse"?
"Art is work of quality made for intercourse with others."
"ART IS WORK OF QUALITY MADE FOR THE INDULGENCE OF OTHERS."
He then goes through the wording and dispenses with caviling over 'is' and 'of' as Clintonesque.
It's work, he says, which means that someone must have made it, and says this is perhaps the reason we don't buy Duchamp's Fountain as being serious (I think this is astute). Quality, too, I will accept.
I like the brevity of the definition. "Indulgence"? My Collegiate Webster's offers, "to treat oneself with excessive leniency, generosity, or consideration, to take unrestrained pleasure in, to show undue favor to a person or his wishes."
Art ought to in some way challenge the reader at least as much as a crossword puzzle.
Indulgence sounds more like a lap dance.
I think GM's being deliberately provocative with the word, "indulgence." Can GM be deliberately provocative?
The Catholics sold indulgences for remission of purgatorial punishment, in order to allow penitents to be pardoned through commercial means. But I think he means more in the sense of "to yield to the desire of" which is something along the lines of a b.j., rather than in the ecclesiastical sense.
I sought alternatives and thought "interest" but the word is not interesting. And I thought "entertainment" but that's bad, too.
Entertainment can mean schlock. I think all these terms militate against "quality."
The quality of a thing that arouses interest, concern, and a sense of contemplation about the nature of art itself. That word "indulgence" is deliberately a mistake, I think, that forces us to try to correct it. Indulgence refers to an inferior emotional state.
Once GM brings in Clinton he perhaps started to think in terms of abusive power relationships and cheap sex with interns. If so, why not just bring up "intercourse"?
"Art is work of quality made for intercourse with others."
Jesus Enters Brussels in 1888
James Ensor's painting Christ Enters Brussels in 1888 is often thought to be a satire of the way in which commercial values trump spiritual values. In the painting Jesus is quite small, but he is also quite central. While everyone else wears a mask, and is half-crazy, Christ is sane, and has a glowing halo. He gives meaning to the whole circus.
Although he wasn't very big, in the whole field of signs including some for mustard or for socialism, Christ is the one sign that makes sense. His appearance provides a locus for meaning that trumps all other meanings, and creates a great stark beautiful truth that associates all the other signs with dust.
Ensor's intentions were never made clear in this painting (which I admit is difficult to see, because it's a giant painting in the original, but there are seemingly no good reproductions of it on the web).
In Saussure, the notion of signs and significance are intermixed. But there is also such a thing as a UNIQUE SIGN, a sign that makes all the others make sense. This is the notion of ultimate significance. Christ's ultimate significance is not yet understood, and probably never will be. His radiance blinds us, and yet remains a focus for all times and places, not just for Brussels in 1888.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Accelerated Programs
Whatever happened to the Accelerated Programs that once existed in elementary and high schools? Do they still exist? I live in a small village with just one high school for twenty miles.
I think the high school has one or two AP programs, but it doesn't have any kind of accelerated programming for the little guys. My kindergartner is the only one who can read whole books in his class. The others are still learning their letters.
In the northern suburbs of Philadelphia in the mid-1960s it was possible to opt out of the normal programming and be with other gifted students. This was quite a relief. In 1st and second grade I remember the horror of listening to other people learning to read while I was already reading mystery novels. While the students around me struggled to learn the names of the presidents, I could already rattle them off, and had a sense of their accomplishments. Even in math I was way ahead.
For several years it was idyllic to play chess, and to talk about Roman history, with my gifted pals, after school. We'd play chess, have long arguments, and discuss our poems, and wouldn't immediately resort to beating each other up. All through that period, I never got into a fight, or even saw one.
Then we moved to a podunk, and there were again just a handful of smart kids who were again oppressed by the great majority of blockheads who ruled the hallways, clogging up every learning experience by struggles with punctuation, and difficulties with the simplest accounts of the fall of Carthage, and all conflicts were settled with fists, or in some cases, guns.
Does accelerated programming still exist in the larger cities, and can you get away from the hoi polloi, or has it been denounced as elitist by the new communists who now clog everything up with their dumb reeducation schemes? I do think it's important to remind oneself that if you have a gift, then it's not all just for you, and you owe something to God and your society by making the most of it, but on the other hand, it can be something like being in a prison full of angry nuts to be in a normal school subjected to slow learners and quick tempers.
A lot of people around here opt for homeschooling because the normal programming is so -- allow me to use a banned term -- retarded. I often felt growing up that I was in a group of Cyclopsean children, and had been misplaced. Then for those three great years -- I was in a gifted program where you had to have an IQ of 140 and above to get in. Suddenly, it was like going at the speed of light in classes.
And then, we moved, and I was back in with the dummies. There was no point in even paying attention in classes.
I don't like the homeschooling option because I think it's important to learn to get along with everybody, including dummies. Sometimes academic dummies have hearts of gold (not often), or have golden manners (seldom), or at least have some common sense, or some mechanical ability. Plus, I think it's important to meet a wide variety of other people when you're growing up, so you can experience different viewpoints, and figure out how to get along with creeps, since the vast majority of people are creeps.
Should gifted children be allowed to class off, so as to move that much faster in classes? Does this in turn delay social learning so that the nerds get even nerdier?
I wasn't ever a nerd, and wasn't ever beaten up. But I had to constantly calm down the Cyclopsean dunderheads around me. Is there a better way?
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Indian Bear Dance
We didn't have a lot of time to look at art in Washington DC but were going through the White House photo shoot, and then went into the Natural History museum, but it was so busy in there you could only move with the crowd, seeing stuff as you went, so we decided to leave and were somehow shuffled into the National Gallery of Art because we thought we could find room to move of our own volition. Since no one much likes art we were virtually alone in the cavernous museum, and we got to see some funny paintings by someone named George Catlin who was born in Wilkes-Barre and lived from 1796-1872. He painted Indians, and he liked how much fun they were having. This hilarious painting from 1861 depicts members of the K-nisteneaux tribe doing a BEAR DANCE.
Many people talk about how oppressed the Indians were, or how they needed our help to become more like us. But as short and brutal as their lives were, at least in this painting they look like they are having a lot of fun. It is the only painting I actually looked at for four days. The original has lovely paint built up off the surface, and you can see the silly looks on the faces of the Indian men.
These men only hunted and made war, they never did any domestic stuff like the dishes. Women did the dishes. When Catlin's paintings were shown in Paris, Charles Baudelaire wrote,
"Monsieur Catlin has captured the proud, free character and noble expression of these splendid fellows in a masterly style."
But I don't see anything proud or noble on their faces, but perhaps they were too proud to do dishes, and being free of domestic work made their lives happy. They look like a bunch of goofballs.
I know I've already posted a lot today, but I wanted to figure out who had made that painting, and oddly my wife had been captivated by the same picture, and taken a photo. The guards told us we were free to photograph the pictures. This made me not want to do it, but my wife Riikka went right ahead. This tribe was a bunch of nuts. They were also called Cree Indians. They look like they have a sense of humor. Different tribes had different viewpoints. This one looks like they thought of everything as hilarious.
(click on it for closer inspection)
Another look at Moore's House
This is a glance down the street (toward the west). The plaque says, "Marianne Moore, 1887-1972. Eminent poet, editor, essayist and teacher. Her independent spirit and keen eye for detail distinguished her life and work. Moore won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, And the National Book Award. She lived here (1896-1916)."
Moore's House in Carlisle
Moore's house in Carlisle was on a major thoroughfare called Hanover Street. Traffic was unrelenting. As I gassed up across the street at a Sunoco, I snapped a few pics. Hers is the center house (gray) with the red car passing in front of it. The stone work of the front appeared to be made out of some synthetic material. I don't think it was stone.
There is also a plaque in front which appears to be correct in terms of the dates listed for her having lived there (1896-1916). They moved in 1916, when her brother got his first job in New Jersey. Moore quickly quit working at the Carlisle Indian School and she and her mother moved into the pastor's house along with her brother. Then they moved to Brooklyn in 1918, when her brother was assigned to the Brooklyn Naval Yard.
At any rate, the house you see is nothing special. In the upper left is the corner of the Sunoco roof over the gas bays. (If you click on the photo, does it get larger?)
Friday, October 09, 2009
Marianne Moore and the Avant-Garde
Marianne Moore is considered an avant-garde writer by some, but does the designation really fit? Exactly what we mean by avant-garde is questionable. Some think this means must be socialist, must be brazen and vicious in terms of sexual conduct, must be quite difficult in terms of understanding the writing (elitist). Perhaps Moore qualifies on the last of these three criteria.
On May 5, 2006, Silliman wrote a post about Marianne Moore and other modernists, and indicts her for having failed to make the traditional distinction between avant-garde and conventional writing. Silliman also accuses Moore of destroying Native American heritage, making Indian children into faux-Europeans while working at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle PA (it was a famous boarding school for Indians from around the country). Jim Thorpe among others were there, and they destroyed many elite football teams around the country, including edging out Harvard in 1910 (a year in which the team went 19-1).
Some celebrate this, but Silliman doesn't, employing his avant-garde/quietist distinction to put Moore into a class of colonizing Europeanizers, in other words, Indians are the avant-garde, and the Europeans are the quietists (perhaps?); and Moore didn't make that distinction, and thus she's guilty of participating in the genocide against the Indians, and against the avant-garde (who are wild like Indians, as opposed to the genteel qualities of the Europeans). I've excerpted from a bit where he's talking about how troubled he is by interviews with various modernists because of their right-wingism, which is linked to their fascism (Silliman was the former editor of the Socialist Review):
"Moore perhaps most of all because she’s so sweet about it, taking him [interviewer Donald Hall of the Paris Review] out to lunch but deciding not to wear her Nixon button – the piece was conducted on the Monday prior to the 1960 presidential election – because it would not match her outfit. Pound flat out lies about his involvements during World War 2.
We are now as far from the election of JFK as that event was from the start of the First World War. In 1914, Ezra Pound was still working for William Butler Yeats in London, H.D. had not yet met Bryher, Williams was still imitating Keats, James Joyce was just publishing Dubliners, Faulkner was a teenager, Zukofsky just 10, Moore was teaching at the Carlisle Indian School in South Central Pennsylvania, making faux Europeans out of children taken from their tribes, Russia was still ruled by the czar.
I think it’s hard for anyone in my generation to fathom just exactly how far we have come, as a species, as a nation, as a poetry community over the last 90 years. You can sense it in the interviews of the modernists especially: their idea of American literature is a scene about the size of the one we have in Philadelphia, maybe smaller, where everyone knew everyone pretty much, or at least of everyone – I was surprised to discover that Moore didn’t actually meet Stevens until ’43. Asked if he reads younger poets, Pound concedes that “Cal Lowell” isn’t bad, but says nothing of the writers who actually took The Cantos as a project seriously, such as Olson. Hall tries to draw Moore out on her elusive literary politics by framing a question this way:
Louise Bogan said that The Dial [Moore was editor of the Dial] made clear “the obvious division between American avant-garde and American conventional writing.” Do you think this kind of division continues or has continued? Was this in any way a deliberate policy?
As I read this, [Donald] Hall is hoping Moore will challenge that division – the same impulse that later led him to recommend Tom Clark as his successor at the journal – but Moore, knowing New Yorker poetry editor Bogan’s commitments in this “obvious division,” dodges the question:
I think that individuality was the great thing. We were not conforming to anything. We certainly didn’t have a policy, except I remember hearing the word “intensity” very often. A thing must have “intensity.” That seemed to be the criterion."
It seems to me that Silliman is making huge binaries here, and hoping to shove Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound off the edge of an abyss (along with poet Tom Clark) into a kind of collaborationist with the fascists (also known as quietists) who are responsible for being so incredibly laggard wrt Indian culture, 3rd world culture, women, and everything that the left now considers under the nomiker "multicultural" and accuses them of being monoculturalists.
The touch of the Nixon button is meant to be a huge beeping signal.
But then James Brown stumped for Nixon. Kerouac was a Republican who supported the war in Vietnam. Silliman wants to make clear divides between good and bad, and to throw Moore into the bad group along with Tom Clark and Pound, among others. I'm not so sure that people can be thus lumped. People have good and bad mixed together in them, and it can't be sorted out so easily. Ideas that might have seemed good (helping Vietnam go communist) now seem quite bad (Vietnam has almost no economy today, and has zero in terms of freedom of speech, so it seems to me it has lost everything that the left in America enjoys).
Which is not to say that I don't believe in the avant-garde. I just think it has everything to do with Jesus and Martin Luther and James Madison, and nothing to do with Marx and Lenin or Ho Chi Minh.
And I would definitely include both Marianne Moore and Tom Clark and James Brown and Jim Thorpe in my avant-garde. Hot pants.
On May 5, 2006, Silliman wrote a post about Marianne Moore and other modernists, and indicts her for having failed to make the traditional distinction between avant-garde and conventional writing. Silliman also accuses Moore of destroying Native American heritage, making Indian children into faux-Europeans while working at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle PA (it was a famous boarding school for Indians from around the country). Jim Thorpe among others were there, and they destroyed many elite football teams around the country, including edging out Harvard in 1910 (a year in which the team went 19-1).
Some celebrate this, but Silliman doesn't, employing his avant-garde/quietist distinction to put Moore into a class of colonizing Europeanizers, in other words, Indians are the avant-garde, and the Europeans are the quietists (perhaps?); and Moore didn't make that distinction, and thus she's guilty of participating in the genocide against the Indians, and against the avant-garde (who are wild like Indians, as opposed to the genteel qualities of the Europeans). I've excerpted from a bit where he's talking about how troubled he is by interviews with various modernists because of their right-wingism, which is linked to their fascism (Silliman was the former editor of the Socialist Review):
"Moore perhaps most of all because she’s so sweet about it, taking him [interviewer Donald Hall of the Paris Review] out to lunch but deciding not to wear her Nixon button – the piece was conducted on the Monday prior to the 1960 presidential election – because it would not match her outfit. Pound flat out lies about his involvements during World War 2.
We are now as far from the election of JFK as that event was from the start of the First World War. In 1914, Ezra Pound was still working for William Butler Yeats in London, H.D. had not yet met Bryher, Williams was still imitating Keats, James Joyce was just publishing Dubliners, Faulkner was a teenager, Zukofsky just 10, Moore was teaching at the Carlisle Indian School in South Central Pennsylvania, making faux Europeans out of children taken from their tribes, Russia was still ruled by the czar.
I think it’s hard for anyone in my generation to fathom just exactly how far we have come, as a species, as a nation, as a poetry community over the last 90 years. You can sense it in the interviews of the modernists especially: their idea of American literature is a scene about the size of the one we have in Philadelphia, maybe smaller, where everyone knew everyone pretty much, or at least of everyone – I was surprised to discover that Moore didn’t actually meet Stevens until ’43. Asked if he reads younger poets, Pound concedes that “Cal Lowell” isn’t bad, but says nothing of the writers who actually took The Cantos as a project seriously, such as Olson. Hall tries to draw Moore out on her elusive literary politics by framing a question this way:
Louise Bogan said that The Dial [Moore was editor of the Dial] made clear “the obvious division between American avant-garde and American conventional writing.” Do you think this kind of division continues or has continued? Was this in any way a deliberate policy?
As I read this, [Donald] Hall is hoping Moore will challenge that division – the same impulse that later led him to recommend Tom Clark as his successor at the journal – but Moore, knowing New Yorker poetry editor Bogan’s commitments in this “obvious division,” dodges the question:
I think that individuality was the great thing. We were not conforming to anything. We certainly didn’t have a policy, except I remember hearing the word “intensity” very often. A thing must have “intensity.” That seemed to be the criterion."
It seems to me that Silliman is making huge binaries here, and hoping to shove Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound off the edge of an abyss (along with poet Tom Clark) into a kind of collaborationist with the fascists (also known as quietists) who are responsible for being so incredibly laggard wrt Indian culture, 3rd world culture, women, and everything that the left now considers under the nomiker "multicultural" and accuses them of being monoculturalists.
The touch of the Nixon button is meant to be a huge beeping signal.
But then James Brown stumped for Nixon. Kerouac was a Republican who supported the war in Vietnam. Silliman wants to make clear divides between good and bad, and to throw Moore into the bad group along with Tom Clark and Pound, among others. I'm not so sure that people can be thus lumped. People have good and bad mixed together in them, and it can't be sorted out so easily. Ideas that might have seemed good (helping Vietnam go communist) now seem quite bad (Vietnam has almost no economy today, and has zero in terms of freedom of speech, so it seems to me it has lost everything that the left in America enjoys).
Which is not to say that I don't believe in the avant-garde. I just think it has everything to do with Jesus and Martin Luther and James Madison, and nothing to do with Marx and Lenin or Ho Chi Minh.
And I would definitely include both Marianne Moore and Tom Clark and James Brown and Jim Thorpe in my avant-garde. Hot pants.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
UPLIFTING ADAGES! (add your own)
Give someone something, and you impoverish them.
Hand someone hope, and they become depressed.
The more talk there is about change, the more things remain the same.
Work first: when you're dead you can play.
From each according to their work ethic; to each according to their work ethic.
Think globally, act provincially.
Giving is an attempt to make your head into a bill-board of virtue like the corporate sponsors that backed the making of the heads of Easter Island.
God helps those who won't help anybody but themselves.
It's not important to understand the world, nor is it important to change it. The important thing is to be irritated by it, without proposing constructive solutions.
The poor shall always be poor.
And this one, specially set aside for termites:
When the boring gets tough, the tough get boring.
Hand someone hope, and they become depressed.
The more talk there is about change, the more things remain the same.
Work first: when you're dead you can play.
From each according to their work ethic; to each according to their work ethic.
Think globally, act provincially.
Giving is an attempt to make your head into a bill-board of virtue like the corporate sponsors that backed the making of the heads of Easter Island.
God helps those who won't help anybody but themselves.
It's not important to understand the world, nor is it important to change it. The important thing is to be irritated by it, without proposing constructive solutions.
The poor shall always be poor.
And this one, specially set aside for termites:
When the boring gets tough, the tough get boring.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Why Haven't I Read Adam Smith?
There's an opposition in many young people's minds between communism and capitalism.
However, communism is just state-run capitalism.
In Smithian capitalism the role of the state is to make sure that business practices are on the up and up.
In communist capitalism the role of the state is to take over all business practices, so there is no separate watchdog to make sure there is a balance in all the checks. The communist government is both the sole corporation and the one that silences any checkers on the balances.
Communism and capitalism are both capitalist, but in the former the government and the corporations are one and the same thing, in the latter the government is a checker against corruption.
The young people love the Dalai Lama but the Dalai Lama has never read Adam Smith. If he had he could possibly enlighten Obama, IF Obama would let him talk to him (he has recently said he won't meet with the Dalai Lama because he has to defer to communist China).
Young people probably don't think about economics, but they should, when words like "change" are tossed about.
Money is almost very important, and even though I haven't read Adam Smith, I've read a gloss, and wondered if money is so important, and so theoretically central, why haven't I done it?
Smith's is not a hip text.
So I would guess that no one outside of business and economics has actually read The Wealth of Nations.
If we read it, we might come to conclusions as to why the poor are poor that are different than the conclusions to which Marx might bring us.
But Smith is not hip. Let's not read him.
However, communism is just state-run capitalism.
In Smithian capitalism the role of the state is to make sure that business practices are on the up and up.
In communist capitalism the role of the state is to take over all business practices, so there is no separate watchdog to make sure there is a balance in all the checks. The communist government is both the sole corporation and the one that silences any checkers on the balances.
Communism and capitalism are both capitalist, but in the former the government and the corporations are one and the same thing, in the latter the government is a checker against corruption.
The young people love the Dalai Lama but the Dalai Lama has never read Adam Smith. If he had he could possibly enlighten Obama, IF Obama would let him talk to him (he has recently said he won't meet with the Dalai Lama because he has to defer to communist China).
Young people probably don't think about economics, but they should, when words like "change" are tossed about.
Money is almost very important, and even though I haven't read Adam Smith, I've read a gloss, and wondered if money is so important, and so theoretically central, why haven't I done it?
Smith's is not a hip text.
So I would guess that no one outside of business and economics has actually read The Wealth of Nations.
If we read it, we might come to conclusions as to why the poor are poor that are different than the conclusions to which Marx might bring us.
But Smith is not hip. Let's not read him.
Monday, October 05, 2009
Moore's MODERNISM
Modernism meant a break with the past. It meant the world is now different. At the same time, many "modernists" went to Paris or London or Rome (the Old World) to express their disaffection with the New.
Pound ended up in Italy.
Eliot ended up in London.
Henry Miller went to Paris.
Marianne Moore and WCW stayed home. While WCW had some breaks with his cultural roots, Moore never did. She was raised Presbyterian, and remained Presbyterian.
She never broke with her family unit. They always remained her closest confidants.
She had a very deep taproot through the church, and she never cut herself off or became disaffected.
Always thought to be within the modernists, and in some ways avant-garde, she was also part of the old guard. She never stood against America. She was as comfortable in Carlisle, PA as she was in New York City.
Even through the conflict in Vietnam, she remained on the side of America, and never became a Maoist cheerleader. There is nothing in any of her poems that would show that she was for Ho, or communism, or the Sexual Revolution.
She had a deep sense of continuity with the American past, and is buried at Gettysburg, where her grandfather gave a kind of Gettysburg Address, as a pastor, against slavery.
To read Marianne Moore, is to read America.
Pound ended up in Italy.
Eliot ended up in London.
Henry Miller went to Paris.
Marianne Moore and WCW stayed home. While WCW had some breaks with his cultural roots, Moore never did. She was raised Presbyterian, and remained Presbyterian.
She never broke with her family unit. They always remained her closest confidants.
She had a very deep taproot through the church, and she never cut herself off or became disaffected.
Always thought to be within the modernists, and in some ways avant-garde, she was also part of the old guard. She never stood against America. She was as comfortable in Carlisle, PA as she was in New York City.
Even through the conflict in Vietnam, she remained on the side of America, and never became a Maoist cheerleader. There is nothing in any of her poems that would show that she was for Ho, or communism, or the Sexual Revolution.
She had a deep sense of continuity with the American past, and is buried at Gettysburg, where her grandfather gave a kind of Gettysburg Address, as a pastor, against slavery.
To read Marianne Moore, is to read America.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
EQUALITY
Equality is a good principle, but is it always good?
This summer, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America held a showdown in Minneapolis during the Churchwide Assembly. There were eleven plenary sessions, and seven of them dealt extensively with sexuality, according to an article in the October 2009 LUTHERAN FORUM LETTER, by Richard O. Johnson.
Until recently, major changes in the ELCA had to be passed by a two-third's vote. However, the rules were changed this summer to allow for a simple majority.
After discussion, the rules change was put to a vote in order to allow for a simple majority, and passed 584-436.
Who were all these voters? Apparently some were bishops, some were pastors, and some were church activists and lay people. 60 percent were laity, the rest were pastors, and seminarians.
Then there was the big vote, the one on gay ordination. This has been hotly contested for a decade or more, and was something the Lutheran left would never sit still for. They finally won the much awaited decision, by exactly one vote. Johnson writes that the "assembly applauded" and the bishop, who is supposed to stop any sense of triumphalism in the body, didn't stop it. The vote itself may or may not be suspect. Only the top bishop sees the returns, and generally he asks if anyone appeared to have had problems with their voting machines. This time, he didn't ask.
Then a variety of social questions were rushed through, with a minority group within the ELCA using the Assembly to enact social issues, controlling the agenda, forcing the discussions through, and manufacturing consent. It sounds rather like Congress and the Stimulus bill. An Ethiopian dissident priest who was trying to martial dissent against gay ordination, had his large group (the largest black congregation in the ELCA), "praying that the churchwide assembly would not approve the sexuality proposals" (page 6) outside the Convention Center. One of the Ethiopian leaders, a former bishop, was finally "escorted from the convention center by security guards" (page 7). He didn't have the money to buy a badge to enter the convention, but one senses that if he was on the other side, he would have been invited in to speak, with the fee waived.
A large dissident group within the ELCA called Lutheran Core met in Fishers, Indiana last week to discuss secession. (I don't know what happened yet, because news among Lutherans has to wait for the circulars, which lag about 6 weeks behind events.) A new semi-denomination called Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ has now a couple hundred disaffected ELCA congregations, and more are streaming that way. We'll see how this works out. One big worry is that the missions in Africa and Asia will no longer accept the ELCA as gay ordination jars against local customs. (The Episcopalian Bishop of Nigeria and Uganda have vetoed accepting any money from American Episcopalians, and African Lutherans are likely to follow suit.)
It's possible to make the Bible say just about anything. You can make it for marriage between a man and a woman (citing Jesus in Matthew) or you can make it say that God is dead set against marriage (he wants to bust up the family in another passage, and say that anyone who wants a family is a psycho), or you can make it all about love, irrespective of the sociological nature of the lovers. Christianity therefore seems to be quite plastic.
But Christianity is still a big deal in this society, and its legitimacy is therefore fought over, with crypto-Marxists crawling through the seminaries, determined to get to the top, and change the family-oriented nature of the orthodoxy.
In the 1960s the left believed that if they could take over institutions from inside, they could then use them to legitimate their agenda. They then took over universities, and assemblies, and even walked through churches, swiftly advancing, taking over newspapers, and news programs on TV, until they now have control of most institutions. As this has happened, however, the very legitimacy of our institutions has come under scrutiny. Community activist groups like ACORN have rallied to affect change, but in the process, they themselves have come under scrutiny.
"The long march through the institutions," has succeeded, but now many are abandoning those institutions, and starting new ones. A general sense that democracy has been overriden in the ELCA seems to prevail within the more conservative sphere. Something similar has happened in the universities.
Marxism doesn't believe in equality. They want to own the institutions, and have a dictatorship. Some are more equal than others, in the Orwellian phrase that catches this quality of the Marxist left.
In the ELCA, one senses that many prefer St. Karl to St. Paul. But equality is still the central principle, and it's an agonizing one. Everyone is struggling for definition. Who gets to define it? If everyone can pastor, that would be equality, but only in a sense. It's similar to the notion that everyone should receive an A, or everyone should have health insurance, or everyone should be a doctor, or anyone can be on the Supreme Court, as long as they are from some disadvantaged group. Equality is the most divisive issue on earth. The ELCA lets lay people have MORE of the vote on deep changes than it allows to the priesthood. It's bizarre. As a layperson, how can you possibly know? It's like letting first-graders determine what they should be taught. Do they really know what's for their own good? Some denominations, and Catholics themselves, will not ordain women, because they don't know what's for their own good. Many Catholics have begun formulating their opposition to the ELCA's new ruling, because Lutherans presumably have never known what's for their own good. Some denominations will ordain any adult who feels that they are called, and there are churches where all you have to do is fill out a card, and you can become a pastor, and start to preach (Universal Life Church). A friend of mine did this in Seattle thirty years ago and was thus enabled to marry her friends, which she did. (I believe all those who were married by her are now divorced.) In a recent issue of Lutheran Forum, Paul Saur said that the general unwritten rule was, "Would you want this guy to be your mom's pastor?" But everyone has a different mom. Nero had a mom. Hitler had a mom. Heymanjihad has a mom. Would you want this person to pastor your child?
While we strain for a universal belief or two that can unite us, we are struck with relativism. It's always been this way in the church, Richard O. Johnson writes (most of what I have written here is based on thinking done while reading his church circular in Lutheran Forum Letter, October 2009). Few will have access to this document. It's 25 dollars a year from American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, PO box 327, Delhi, NY 13753.
I like the Lutheran Forum Letter. It gives access to some of the most grievous issues in the church, as articulated by very articulate people. There is now a bit more on the arts, too.
I myself would like to see an equal role for the arts in the Protestant churches. (Equal to what?) Well, equal at least to what I see as the role of the arts in Catholic churches and in Marxist organizations. Why abandon the arts to our rivals?
But the big-ticket item right now for the ELCA is the carrying forward of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The superannuated of today felt it was unequal for women to not get abortions back in the 1960s, and for gay people to not be able to marry, or to have the insurance that helps them get through illnesses (AIDS medicines can now slow or even stop the death of HIV, but it is extremely expensive, and without insurance almost no one could afford it). They are determined not to die without these changes having been made. The church is therefore being remade: St. Paul is censured, and the translations changed, and tiny phrases brought to the fore, and others dropped, or never mentioned. Jesus was given a gender-change operation, and is now gender-neutral. God himself is now a woman, having also been operated on. Many people who want money to go in other directions, or have questions about the faith that move in different directions, or who feel like me are leaving the ELCA, or thinking about it, because they don't want to be alienated by all these changes. One of the things I liked about the church was the phrase, "Is now and ever shall be, world without end." In the midst of all change, there was something timeless.
In one's home, one should feel equal, and safe, and respected. But are children equal to parents in terms of decisions? Generally, discipline is something that parents enforce, or else the family would spend all its available income at Disney Land, while eating ice cream, and bed-time would be neverneverland. The church is one's home, or else it isn't, and one finds another, or changes the church. I like the idea of a pastor who understands the traditions of the church and enforces them. I don't understand why the laity gets to vote inside the ELCA. It's amazing to watch as the different factions try to find a set of rules that allows for a feeling of being at one with God, but with every new change comes new schisms, as the church is riven by crypto-secularist Marxists who think of History as something that is progressing toward unity of the dispossessed.
The problem right now is that although equality is enshrined in the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and other important documents, and appears to be an inborn idea to some degree (babies understand that if you give one a cookie and the other half a cookie that something is wrong), we still don't really know what it means. Feminists argue that since literature has always been about men, there should be departments in which everything is about women to make up for lost time. This is only fair, they argue. Those arguments have resulted in 6000 or more departments in which the only topic is women's literature. We have similar departments throughout ethnic studies where the same argument has been made. Literature has always been about white men, it is argued, so we should have a department in which the monopoly is on the other foot, and be about any of a growing number of splinter groups.
Like the church, the legitimation that artistry provides is a powerful tool. But as those tools are increasingly wielded for visible worldly goals, their legitimation falters, and fades.
Arguments for equality turn to arguments for monopoly, or use equality to argue for a permanent monopoly. In a sense, Lincoln's arguments did that, too, as he said there was to be unity at the expense of diversity. And he alone was going to decide.
Equality is a conundrum, but at least we've got it down to one word that's causing all the problems. What is equality? Watch out for how people define it!
And perhaps there is such a thing as too much equality! The Supreme Court for instance isn't EQUAL to the other courts, and once you're on it, you're entitled to be a judge for life. I sense that one of the problems with the Lutheran bishops is that they have to fear their removal through voting, which is perhaps the same problem for pastors. It's not clear to me how bishops are removed, but they seem to be a skittish lot. University presidents around the country are also a skittish lot, and should be, because they can easily be removed. The president of Harvard University got bounced because he implied women weren't any good at math. Perhaps the leaders should have some kind of position more like that of the Supreme Court, so that they can vote their conscience. Here's what Richard Johnson writes wrt the bishops:
"The morning after I got home, I walked out of my house to see a flock of wild turkeys. I mean no disrespect to either species by saying I immediately thought of bishops. Wild turkeys strut and look very concerned, but if anything threatens, they pull in their tail feathers and run in several directions" (p. 5).
Friday, October 02, 2009
TOWARD A LUNAR OLYMPICS
The Olympics should be held on neutral ground, and since all the earth is used up, I propose the moon.
Not only could the high jump records be broken due to the lower gravitational pull, but things like water polo would be freaky and fun.
Pole vaults could be over a mile high!
And nations from around the world would have to hitch a ride from us to get their athletes up there. Maybe even the president's wife could feel so proud of this country that our space program is much further along than that of Venezuela's! The French would have to suck up to us again even to get to the arena!
A lot of sports events in the summer Olympics have to do with competing against gravity. Throwing lead balls would be much easier. Lifting heavy weights: a cinch. Throwing a discus might result in new interplanetary objects.
It would be fun to have a change of venue. WELCOME TO THE LUNAR OLYMPICS!
The Numbers Behind Numb3rs, by Keith Devlin
This is a neat little paperback I picked up a few weeks ago at a B&N, while browsing with my 40% discount.
I think I paid about 9 dollars.
The book is about using mathematics to solve crimes, and is based on a current TV show that is about a mathematician who helps his police officer brother. The first chapter is based on a Vancouver, Canada police officer named Rossmo who got wind of a serial killer, and proposed a geographical method of tracking down the killer. He has a strange formula for creating the probable area where the killer lived. Using it, the police honed in on four streets, and interviewed the men of the right age on those streets, and caught the killer. The formula is as cool as it is incomprehensible. The map above is from a blog by a Northeastern University mathematics prof. This blog is exclusively about the show, and the formula is used in this blog, if you want to see it. I wasn't sure how to copy the formula, so left it there!
http://nuweb2.neu.edu/math/cp/blog/
Here's a little article about the method as it was recently used to catch the "chair burglar":
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ocregister.com/newsimages/news/2005/11/05chairburglar-graphic.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_752609.php&usg=__omEQC2LsFbC20GwIVMYFW2gVuCw=&h=613&w=192&sz=22&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=fvttHu80_lcDhM:&tbnh=136&tbnw=43&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dperimeter%2Bof%2Bgeographical%2Bprofiling%2Brossmo%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
The next chapter was about a nurse who was apparently needling heart attack victims with too much epinephrine. This caused them to go over the edge into fatality. She apparently hated men of a certain age, and was using her position as a nurse to play Joseph Mengele with them. Sometimes she brought them back from death, sometimes she dropped them over the edge with a prejudice.
The other nurses noticed that the mortality rates were about double when she was on the ward. The actual numbers weren't that much higher -- about 15 more mortalities per year when this psycho was around. (35 on her shifts as opposed to 20, per annum.) Sometimes she mysteriously seemed to be able to bring heart attack victims back from the precipice, and got lauded on the front pages of newspapers.
A mathematician did a statistical intervention and although they couldn't prove she had been killing the men, he said that there was a one in a hundred million chance that she was innocent. The jury bought it.
She's locked up for life as a serial killer.
I've never seen the program Numb3rs. It's been going since 2005, and I just heard about it. It's on tonight between 10 and 11 on WBNG (I think this is also ABC), and I plan to tune in. The episode tonight is called FRIENDLY FIRE, and is listed as having this as content:
"Don's team is called in to investigate when several FBI agents are killed in a firefight with bank robbers. Meanwhile, Larry makes a decision that worries Charlie and Amita."
I predict they are going to talk about the maximum firepower that can be used in an enclosed space without endangering fellow officers. Let's see!
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