Out to get me
Apologies for the fact that half the archive links aren't working any more, nor are the permalinks on this page. This time it's not just me though -- everyone on Blogspot seems to have toasted archives. Well, you get what you (don't) pay for, eh?
Also, sorry that posting has been light and is going to get lighter. Work, Christmas stuff, etc. have crowded out those long posts I've been daydreaming about. Tomorrow morning I'm flying off to my father's house for Christmas. I may squeeze in a post or two from his computer, but no guarantees.
New Year's resolutions are: a) move to Movable Type and b) post more. Stay tuned, true believers!
UPDATE: Well, through the mysteries of Blogger, links are back. I still want to get out of here tough...
Friday, December 20, 2002
Two become one
Continuing the Camassia Cost-Cutting Program, I've decided to become one of the 3 million people in America with only a mobile phone and no land line. This is not because I am like so many people in L.A., having a phone to my ear wherever I go. In fact, it's because I don't use either phone that much. Most people I interact with are either distant friends and family I communciate with mainly by email, or people I work with and plan things with face to face. Given that, I realized I was spending a truly ridiculous amount of money on phones. I can get a $30-a-month plan and still have minutes left over.
I've also been feeling lately like I have a case of technology pile-up. There have been so many technological changes in my lifetime that, rather than keep switching formats, I keep adding things. Music is the most conspicuous example: I have LPs, cassettes, and CDs, and equipment to play all of them. A lot of people my age don't have any vinyl any more, but I feel like they're perfectly good records, why replace them? Especially since now some are saying the CD is dead and it's all about mp3 or some such thing. I just want it to settle down already.
The phone is like that. Like most people, I think of a land line as a basic utility: you move to a new place and get the power turned on and the water turned on and the phone turned on. But that's already being superseded not only by cell phones but maybe by broadband. Either way, it may disappear as a separate technology. Cell phones themselves are turning into little handheld computers.
I kind of hope that technology change, rather than getting faster and faster, follows a model of punctuated equilibrium, with rapid change interrupting periods of relative stability. Certainly it feels to me that in the communications realm, we are groping around for new standard forms to settle on. But maybe that's my wishful thinking.
Continuing the Camassia Cost-Cutting Program, I've decided to become one of the 3 million people in America with only a mobile phone and no land line. This is not because I am like so many people in L.A., having a phone to my ear wherever I go. In fact, it's because I don't use either phone that much. Most people I interact with are either distant friends and family I communciate with mainly by email, or people I work with and plan things with face to face. Given that, I realized I was spending a truly ridiculous amount of money on phones. I can get a $30-a-month plan and still have minutes left over.
I've also been feeling lately like I have a case of technology pile-up. There have been so many technological changes in my lifetime that, rather than keep switching formats, I keep adding things. Music is the most conspicuous example: I have LPs, cassettes, and CDs, and equipment to play all of them. A lot of people my age don't have any vinyl any more, but I feel like they're perfectly good records, why replace them? Especially since now some are saying the CD is dead and it's all about mp3 or some such thing. I just want it to settle down already.
The phone is like that. Like most people, I think of a land line as a basic utility: you move to a new place and get the power turned on and the water turned on and the phone turned on. But that's already being superseded not only by cell phones but maybe by broadband. Either way, it may disappear as a separate technology. Cell phones themselves are turning into little handheld computers.
I kind of hope that technology change, rather than getting faster and faster, follows a model of punctuated equilibrium, with rapid change interrupting periods of relative stability. Certainly it feels to me that in the communications realm, we are groping around for new standard forms to settle on. But maybe that's my wishful thinking.
Thursday, December 19, 2002
Catholic blogs starting with "D"
I incorrectly identified Dappled Things as Disputations in the last post. It has been corrected. Apologies to both...
I incorrectly identified Dappled Things as Disputations in the last post. It has been corrected. Apologies to both...
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Getting a move-on
Busy day today -- right after work I'm going out to dinner and then to the movies, so all I have time for is a quick post from work. Unfortunately, I can't think of any quick posts to do. I can think of long posts. I'd like to elbow into Peter Nixon's discussion with Dappled Things, and add to Sappho's response to Eve Tushnet on gender. But alas, there isn't time. However, if I say publicly I'm going to write these posts, I think that means I have to do it...
Busy day today -- right after work I'm going out to dinner and then to the movies, so all I have time for is a quick post from work. Unfortunately, I can't think of any quick posts to do. I can think of long posts. I'd like to elbow into Peter Nixon's discussion with Dappled Things, and add to Sappho's response to Eve Tushnet on gender. But alas, there isn't time. However, if I say publicly I'm going to write these posts, I think that means I have to do it...
That sounds like my editorial meetings
Jonathan Chait thnks the Wall Street Journal is run by James Bond villains:
Jonathan Chait thnks the Wall Street Journal is run by James Bond villains:
When I try to visualize the editorial meeting that produced this bit of diabolical inspiration, I imagine one of the more rational staffers--maybe Dorothy Rabinowitz--tentatively raising her hand and asking, "Isn't that idea a bit, you know, immoral?" Then Robert Bartley or Paul Gigot would emit a deep, sinister laugh and press a hidden button, depositing the unfortunate staffer into a tank of piranhas. Come to think of it, I haven't seen Rabinowitz's byline in a couple of weeks.
Wrath of God
Mark at Minute Particulars responded to my earlier post with a helpful clarification of the Catholic view of anger. I've heard Christians toss off the phrase "anger is a sin" before, but I kind of suspected that for intellectual types it's more complicated (I'm sure if Telford weren't so distracted, he'd have a long disquisition on it himself). Coincidentally, I ran across an article on the same subject in an old issue of First Things:
So, I stand corrected. (Well, technically I lounge back in my desk chair corrected, but same thing.) I was also probably too hard on Mark with the "bloodless obeisance" line. There is a difference between being righteously angry and heaping abuse on people, and he was trying to point that out.
Also, I apologize if the NPR tale sounded like an anti-Catholic stereotypes. I did not mean to imply Mark would side with the nuns either. The main reason I brought it up was to describe my thought process. Often my unconscious will send me a smoke signal in the form of a dream or a persistent thought or image, so my forebrain goes, hmm, what's this about? You could see the same process happening in this post. I suppose I don't really need to include the smoke signal in the post, and perhaps it's distracting. But I think it's more interesting that way, and it better shows where I'm coming from.
Mark at Minute Particulars responded to my earlier post with a helpful clarification of the Catholic view of anger. I've heard Christians toss off the phrase "anger is a sin" before, but I kind of suspected that for intellectual types it's more complicated (I'm sure if Telford weren't so distracted, he'd have a long disquisition on it himself). Coincidentally, I ran across an article on the same subject in an old issue of First Things:
Of course it is true that in the Sermon on the Mount, as in the most otherworldly passages of Paul’s Epistles, Christians are told to (in Paul’s words) “let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you” (Ephesians 4:31; cf. Colossians 5:8, 1 Timothy 2:8). However, the full Christian teaching on anger is subtler than such passages might lead one to believe. Not only does Paul himself assume the possibility of making crucial moral distinctions when he tells us: “Be angry but do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26); but Christ himself becomes angry on several occasions (Matthew 21:12; Mark 3:5, 11:15; John 2:15) and even describes God the Father, by way of a parable, as responding with anger to human beings who behave unjustly (Matthew 18:34–35). (It should go without saying that this verse conforms quite closely to the numerous chapters of the Old Testament in which God becomes angry.)
At the very least, such passages complicate the somewhat facile denigration of anger heard so often today. Anger—as everyone from Jesus Christ to the wisest philosophers and theologians seem to recognize—is not inherently depraved. It is, rather, a salutary expression of the same natural love for one’s own that motivates human beings to assert their God–given rights and dignity against those who would deny them. It is thus also rooted in mankind’s innate love of justice—a love that ultimately draws us closer to God.
So, I stand corrected. (Well, technically I lounge back in my desk chair corrected, but same thing.) I was also probably too hard on Mark with the "bloodless obeisance" line. There is a difference between being righteously angry and heaping abuse on people, and he was trying to point that out.
Also, I apologize if the NPR tale sounded like an anti-Catholic stereotypes. I did not mean to imply Mark would side with the nuns either. The main reason I brought it up was to describe my thought process. Often my unconscious will send me a smoke signal in the form of a dream or a persistent thought or image, so my forebrain goes, hmm, what's this about? You could see the same process happening in this post. I suppose I don't really need to include the smoke signal in the post, and perhaps it's distracting. But I think it's more interesting that way, and it better shows where I'm coming from.
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
You plant a demon seed, you raise a flower of fire
Slate today explained why the Ku Klux Klan burns crosses. It was a case of life imitating art: Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman included a cross-burning, as did the movie version, Birth of a Nation. So even though the KKK hadn't previously burned crosses, they took it up after the movie.
The inimitable Cecil Adams covered this some years ago and added another life-imitating-art layer to it: the idea had originally been popularized by Sir Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake. It really was an ancient Scottish custom, but Cecil adds a wrinkle:
Slate today explained why the Ku Klux Klan burns crosses. It was a case of life imitating art: Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman included a cross-burning, as did the movie version, Birth of a Nation. So even though the KKK hadn't previously burned crosses, they took it up after the movie.
The inimitable Cecil Adams covered this some years ago and added another life-imitating-art layer to it: the idea had originally been popularized by Sir Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake. It really was an ancient Scottish custom, but Cecil adds a wrinkle:
Just one problem. The fiery cross of Scottish legend wasn't the upright Roman cross commonly used by the Klan. Rather it was the X-shaped cross of St. Andrew. St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, and an X-shaped cross probably also was a lot easier to make a signal bonfire out of. But nobody ever said the Klan's big attraction was its meticulous sense of detail.
Falling from grace
The Gutless Pacifist fears he's heretical for linking to Razormouth's laceration of a Huggy Jesus Doll.
Hey Pen, since you're a heretic too now, you want to join me in a rousing chorus of Plastic Jesus? That's sure to get us both hit by lightning...
The Gutless Pacifist fears he's heretical for linking to Razormouth's laceration of a Huggy Jesus Doll.
Running low on awful, possibly blasphemous Christmas gift ideas this year?
Fear not, for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great schlock; kitsch shall be to all the people.
For unto you is placed this day under the tree in your living room a doll, which is Huggy Jesus!
Verily, for only $29.95, plus a mere $7.00 shipping and handling, your child can receive from you this "collectable, soft and cuddly, hypoallergenic" Jesus doll designed to let kids know how much the Lord loves them. By parting with a piddling 37 bucks, says HuggyJesus.com, "All can enjoy the warmth and comfort of Huggy Jesus."
Hey Pen, since you're a heretic too now, you want to join me in a rousing chorus of Plastic Jesus? That's sure to get us both hit by lightning...
In the gloaming
My gym is (mostly) closed for repairs this week, so I've taken up the very un-L.A. habit of walking. This is especially unusual because the weather has been, by SoCal standards, bad. Today I walked to Venice Beach, about two miles from my apartment, in a howling wind.
I arrived at the beach just after sunset. I'd never been there when it was like this. The tourists, buskers, bodybuilders, trinket-sellers, even the surfers were gone. The ocean was roiling, the palm trees bowed, and the sand blew low to the ground in currents and rivers of wind, overtaking the pavement in sinous patterns. Although it was cold and the sand kept blowing into my eyes, I was thinking: yeah! Woohoo! Nature is so tame here most of the time, there's something thrilling about being out in it when it gets dramatic.
I walked home, thinking how tomorrow we'd wake up to cleaner air, a bluer sky and dead palm fronds scattered all over the road. Then I got home to find that the wind was the southern edge of a storm that killed nine people. Such is nature, in all its beauty and destruction.
My gym is (mostly) closed for repairs this week, so I've taken up the very un-L.A. habit of walking. This is especially unusual because the weather has been, by SoCal standards, bad. Today I walked to Venice Beach, about two miles from my apartment, in a howling wind.
I arrived at the beach just after sunset. I'd never been there when it was like this. The tourists, buskers, bodybuilders, trinket-sellers, even the surfers were gone. The ocean was roiling, the palm trees bowed, and the sand blew low to the ground in currents and rivers of wind, overtaking the pavement in sinous patterns. Although it was cold and the sand kept blowing into my eyes, I was thinking: yeah! Woohoo! Nature is so tame here most of the time, there's something thrilling about being out in it when it gets dramatic.
I walked home, thinking how tomorrow we'd wake up to cleaner air, a bluer sky and dead palm fronds scattered all over the road. Then I got home to find that the wind was the southern edge of a storm that killed nine people. Such is nature, in all its beauty and destruction.
Monday, December 16, 2002
Time out
I fell on my bad wrist yesterday and it's swelled up and sore, so my typing stamina is rather limited. Such as as it is, I feel obliged to save it up for work. I'm especially annoyed because I'd really like to respond to Minute Particulars, but that will have to wait.
I fell on my bad wrist yesterday and it's swelled up and sore, so my typing stamina is rather limited. Such as as it is, I feel obliged to save it up for work. I'm especially annoyed because I'd really like to respond to Minute Particulars, but that will have to wait.
Saturday, December 14, 2002
Friday, December 13, 2002
Back to normal...whatever that is...
Blogspot let me have my template back, but I stuck with the manually-entered archive links to the left. Except -- whoa! -- when you click on them they're still mysteriously in the Chroma template. OK, whatever. So long as they're there.
UPDATE: OK, fixed that problem. Whew.
Blogspot let me have my template back, but I stuck with the manually-entered archive links to the left. Except -- whoa! -- when you click on them they're still mysteriously in the Chroma template. OK, whatever. So long as they're there.
UPDATE: OK, fixed that problem. Whew.
Scene stealing
Some folks from the office and I are going to see The Two Towers when it opens on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to it; the only thing that worries me is that if it follows the book, it has a giant spider in it. This could be a problem. But actually, giant spiders in movies don't bother me as much as you'd think. They're usually not very realistic, and blowing them up to human size actually isn't as alarming as shrinking people down to fly size Anyway, I know what happens in the scene, so if all else fails I can shut my eyes.
Actually, there's something else that's curious about that scene. I read the book about a year and a half ago, and when I read the spider part I realized it was very familiar. Just a few months before I'd read Edar Rice Burroughs' sci-fi novel Pirates of Venus (well, half before I bailed out -- it wasn't very good), and it had an almost identical scene. In both books (spoiler alert!) two friends meet a giant spider, and it attacks one of them; the other one valiantly fights off the spider with a sword, but returning to his friend, finds him apparently dead. He dithers about whether to abandon the body, finally deciding to stay. Presently the friend revives; it turns out he's only been paralyzed by the poison, not killed.
Burroughs' book came out in the 1930s, so he certainly came up with the scene first. It's hard to believe Tolkien plagiarized, though -- he was apparently a fan of Old English and opposed to everything since the Battle of Hastings, so could he have read tripe like Burroughs? Well, you never know what people's secret vices are. But maybe there are only so many things you can do with a giant spider in your plot.
Some folks from the office and I are going to see The Two Towers when it opens on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to it; the only thing that worries me is that if it follows the book, it has a giant spider in it. This could be a problem. But actually, giant spiders in movies don't bother me as much as you'd think. They're usually not very realistic, and blowing them up to human size actually isn't as alarming as shrinking people down to fly size Anyway, I know what happens in the scene, so if all else fails I can shut my eyes.
Actually, there's something else that's curious about that scene. I read the book about a year and a half ago, and when I read the spider part I realized it was very familiar. Just a few months before I'd read Edar Rice Burroughs' sci-fi novel Pirates of Venus (well, half before I bailed out -- it wasn't very good), and it had an almost identical scene. In both books (spoiler alert!) two friends meet a giant spider, and it attacks one of them; the other one valiantly fights off the spider with a sword, but returning to his friend, finds him apparently dead. He dithers about whether to abandon the body, finally deciding to stay. Presently the friend revives; it turns out he's only been paralyzed by the poison, not killed.
Burroughs' book came out in the 1930s, so he certainly came up with the scene first. It's hard to believe Tolkien plagiarized, though -- he was apparently a fan of Old English and opposed to everything since the Battle of Hastings, so could he have read tripe like Burroughs? Well, you never know what people's secret vices are. But maybe there are only so many things you can do with a giant spider in your plot.
It's a Gen-X thing
I think Dahlia Lithwick must be my age:
OK, everyone knows the Star Wars reference, but even I had almost forgotten that Muppet Show skit. Remembering it this morning almost sent my coffee through my nose with mad giggling. Thanks, Dahlia!
I think Dahlia Lithwick must be my age:
Out of nowhere booms the great, surprising "Luke-I-am-your-father" voice of He Who Never Speaks. Justice Clarence Thomas suddenly asks a question and everyone's head pops up and starts looking madly around, like the Muppets on Veterinarian Hospital.
OK, everyone knows the Star Wars reference, but even I had almost forgotten that Muppet Show skit. Remembering it this morning almost sent my coffee through my nose with mad giggling. Thanks, Dahlia!
Whoa, it's all gone blue!
If you're wondering why the template changed, so am I. I was mucking around trying to fix my archive problem, and screwed up the original template code so bad that I decided to change to another template and then change back so I'd have the original code. Well, Blogspot let me change, but not change back. And the archives it did not let me republish at all, so I entered the links in manually. So now you have full access to my past posts, but at this rate, I think I'm headed for Movable Type.
If you're wondering why the template changed, so am I. I was mucking around trying to fix my archive problem, and screwed up the original template code so bad that I decided to change to another template and then change back so I'd have the original code. Well, Blogspot let me change, but not change back. And the archives it did not let me republish at all, so I entered the links in manually. So now you have full access to my past posts, but at this rate, I think I'm headed for Movable Type.
Thursday, December 12, 2002
I told my wrath, my wrath did end
Do you ever wake up in the morning with a thought already in your mind, as if it had started when you were still asleep? This morning I woke up with a memory, ten years old at least. It was of a piece I heard on NPR, it must have been from Maureen Corrigan, who was remembering a scene from her childhood in Catholic school. The Pope was visiting New York, and the nuns took the students out to wait on the sidewalk for the papal motorcade to come by. It was winter, but the nuns did not let the students wear their coats, because "it was important that His Holiness see our green-and-white school uniforms."
While the students waited with chattering teeth, Corrigan saw the owner of the Jewish deli behind them come out and speak to one of the sisters, gesticulating fervently. Presently he went back into his shop and came out with cups of hot chocolate -- one for each student. "I didn't hear what he said to the sister," Corrigan recalled. "But I'm sure one of the words he used must have been meshugenah."
In my opinion, meshugenah is too kind a word for it. I heard this story when I was in college in Massachusetts, and I knew well what those northeastern winters are like. And why was it so "important" that their uniforms be visible? Why should the Pope care? Even if it is important, this seems like using children to suck up to authority -- to a rather demented degree.
Why was I thinking about this today? I think this might have followed from the exchange I read the day before between Mark at Minute Particulars and Peter Nixon at Sursum Corda. Mark criticized Peter's angry rhetoric last week at Cardinal Law, saying Catholics should show proper respect for the office of bishop, even if they disapprove of the bishops' conduct. Now, I've been reading Sursum Corda for a while and Peter always struck me as one of the nicest guys in the blogosphere, but he admitted he'd flipped out:
Now, I don't like to get involved in intra-Catholic disputes, since I am not a Catholic and never have been. But this made me think about the general Christian idea that anger is a sin. I understand anger is highly dangerous, but I also know it does not always lead to evil. I am sure the gesticulating deli owner was angry, and he probably did not say very nice things to the nuns, but his anger led him to give away his own merchandise to help others. I have no doubt who acted most Christlike in that story. And I am sure that Peter's love of his church, so apparent in the rest of his blog, fueled his rage last week. I'm not that angry at Cardinal Law, but why should I be? I'm not personally invested in him. Give me a little passionate anger in the face of child abuse, over bloodless obeisance to authority, any day of the week.
Do you ever wake up in the morning with a thought already in your mind, as if it had started when you were still asleep? This morning I woke up with a memory, ten years old at least. It was of a piece I heard on NPR, it must have been from Maureen Corrigan, who was remembering a scene from her childhood in Catholic school. The Pope was visiting New York, and the nuns took the students out to wait on the sidewalk for the papal motorcade to come by. It was winter, but the nuns did not let the students wear their coats, because "it was important that His Holiness see our green-and-white school uniforms."
While the students waited with chattering teeth, Corrigan saw the owner of the Jewish deli behind them come out and speak to one of the sisters, gesticulating fervently. Presently he went back into his shop and came out with cups of hot chocolate -- one for each student. "I didn't hear what he said to the sister," Corrigan recalled. "But I'm sure one of the words he used must have been meshugenah."
In my opinion, meshugenah is too kind a word for it. I heard this story when I was in college in Massachusetts, and I knew well what those northeastern winters are like. And why was it so "important" that their uniforms be visible? Why should the Pope care? Even if it is important, this seems like using children to suck up to authority -- to a rather demented degree.
Why was I thinking about this today? I think this might have followed from the exchange I read the day before between Mark at Minute Particulars and Peter Nixon at Sursum Corda. Mark criticized Peter's angry rhetoric last week at Cardinal Law, saying Catholics should show proper respect for the office of bishop, even if they disapprove of the bishops' conduct. Now, I've been reading Sursum Corda for a while and Peter always struck me as one of the nicest guys in the blogosphere, but he admitted he'd flipped out:
I think many of Mark's points are well taken. His ability to maintain detachment and take the long view of this crisis is a good thing. I have usually tried to do that myself.
But I just lost it last week. I'll freely admit that the latest revelations pushed me over the edge into a blinding rage that made me want to bang my head against my keyboard in frustration. Why these revelations in particular? Who knows? They were certainly no worse than some of the things we heard earlier this year. Maybe I just reached my personal tipping point.
Like Mark, I believe that the office of Bishop is one of God's gifts to his Church. It's precisely because I believe this that the actions of Law and other bishops who have concealed abuse make me so angry. Does the sacrament of orders confer grace? You bet it does. But as with all graces, the recipient must cooperate. Respect for an office becomes increasingly hollow if the actions of the officeholder himself continues to undermine that respect.
Now, I don't like to get involved in intra-Catholic disputes, since I am not a Catholic and never have been. But this made me think about the general Christian idea that anger is a sin. I understand anger is highly dangerous, but I also know it does not always lead to evil. I am sure the gesticulating deli owner was angry, and he probably did not say very nice things to the nuns, but his anger led him to give away his own merchandise to help others. I have no doubt who acted most Christlike in that story. And I am sure that Peter's love of his church, so apparent in the rest of his blog, fueled his rage last week. I'm not that angry at Cardinal Law, but why should I be? I'm not personally invested in him. Give me a little passionate anger in the face of child abuse, over bloodless obeisance to authority, any day of the week.
Making marry
A few weeks ago I blogged about Noah Millman's response to Stanley Kurtz's argument against gay marriage. (I can't link to my own posts, because of the !@#%ing missing archives.) I didn't respond to Kurtz's article itself, but Julian Sanchez did. He now regrets his nasty tone somewhat, and writes a more sober post on the legal issues. I agree that his tone was nasty, though I admit I cracked up at his lede: "Once in a great while, there comes an article so breathtakingly stupid, so heroic in its inanity, that as one reads it, even inanimate objects in the surrounding area seem to radiate intelligence by comparison."
A few weeks ago I blogged about Noah Millman's response to Stanley Kurtz's argument against gay marriage. (I can't link to my own posts, because of the !@#%ing missing archives.) I didn't respond to Kurtz's article itself, but Julian Sanchez did. He now regrets his nasty tone somewhat, and writes a more sober post on the legal issues. I agree that his tone was nasty, though I admit I cracked up at his lede: "Once in a great while, there comes an article so breathtakingly stupid, so heroic in its inanity, that as one reads it, even inanimate objects in the surrounding area seem to radiate intelligence by comparison."
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Cooked
I haven't been covering the Trent Lott story here since folks like Josh Marshall are doing it so ably already, but certainly it's been the talk of my office. I tell you, there are folks in my newsroom who are the right of Attila the Hun, and they're all disgusted with Lott. "He's too comfortable hanging around with white supremecists," one editor remarked.
Indeed. But what's also striking is how many conservatives never really liked Lott to begin with. They put up with him, and now they see no reason to. Jonah Goldberg summed it up hilariously: "Regardless, Trent Lott only does two things well, freeze-dry his hair and say stupid things."
Now Lott is trying to apologize more abjectly, but I doubt that will change anyone's mind. The question is, are there enough other freeze-dried white supremecists out there to keep him afloat?
I haven't been covering the Trent Lott story here since folks like Josh Marshall are doing it so ably already, but certainly it's been the talk of my office. I tell you, there are folks in my newsroom who are the right of Attila the Hun, and they're all disgusted with Lott. "He's too comfortable hanging around with white supremecists," one editor remarked.
Indeed. But what's also striking is how many conservatives never really liked Lott to begin with. They put up with him, and now they see no reason to. Jonah Goldberg summed it up hilariously: "Regardless, Trent Lott only does two things well, freeze-dry his hair and say stupid things."
Now Lott is trying to apologize more abjectly, but I doubt that will change anyone's mind. The question is, are there enough other freeze-dried white supremecists out there to keep him afloat?
Give me smut and nothing but
In case anyone's getting tired of the high-minded philosophizing around here, take a look at the Bad Sex Prize. Not for actual bad sex, but for bad writing about sex. It's a hoot, but be warned: you may come out with fewer brain cells than you went in with.
In case anyone's getting tired of the high-minded philosophizing around here, take a look at the Bad Sex Prize. Not for actual bad sex, but for bad writing about sex. It's a hoot, but be warned: you may come out with fewer brain cells than you went in with.
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
The monkey in the middle
The world is still waiting for the sequel to Telford's God and nature post, so I'm still reading the book I said a while ago I'd be blogging about.
It doesn't really cover the topic I was questioning, but it does have a chapter on evolution and what it means for human nature. The chapter's focus is somewhat the opposite of what I was writing about; I was interested in the origin of evil while the author, Francisco Ayala, is concerned with the origin of good.
Actually, "good" may be too vague a term. He's considering the origin of ethics, which are not quite the same as goodness. He argues rather convincingly that human ethics are different from simple empathy or altruism, which can be seen in some animals. Ayala defines ethics by three traits that necessitate human-level intelligence: 1) the ability to anticipate the consequences of one's actions; 2) the ability to make value judgments; and 3) the ability to choose between alternative courses action. Those traits are innate to human beings, Ayala says, and so all societies have codes of ethics. The content of those ethics, however, is culturally determined. He compares it to language: everyone's brain is made for language so everyone speaks one, but there are many different languages out there.
It does seem to me that there is a difference between "animal pity" and ethics, which sometimes require you to do what you know is right even when your feelings tell you something else. This aspect of ethics cuts both ways, morally speaking: you can overcome your bad feelings by making yourself do good, but you can also overcome your good feelings, as when a misguided sense of duty leads a soldier to torture or kill innocents under orders. Yet there is a certain commonality to human ethical codes, at least the ones that I know of. They all involve some degree of subsuming self-interest to others, but the question is to what others. Family? Tribe? Race? Nation? Species? God?
Ayala doesn't really go into how this relates to Christian theology, though I expect Murphy will revisit it at the end of the book. One thing that's curious about his theory as that his second factor in ethics, making value judgments, or knowing good from evil, is what got humans into trouble in the Garden of Eden. It reminded me that in Telford's recent essay on the subject, he never quite explained why that piece of knowledge is the one thing forbidden. Telford explains the serpent's message to the humans thus: "In fact, you will die seeing and knowing the good and evil that God sees and knows. You will die with eyes wide open to what you have done."
Well, that explains why humans would know evil by eating the fruit -- by having disobeyed they will have done evil. But the Tree of Knowledge supposedly yields knowledge of good as well. Perhaps this is simply saying that without evil there is no contrast to call "good," though it still seems peculiar that the story would consistently describe the tree with both -- mentioning good first, in fact. If knowing good from evil is an innate capacity that humans have evolved, as Ayala asserts, how does this translate to the Fall? I mean, like Telford I take this story to be a fable, not history, but even as a fable this is rather problematic. But I will keep reading, and see what turns up.
The world is still waiting for the sequel to Telford's God and nature post, so I'm still reading the book I said a while ago I'd be blogging about.
It doesn't really cover the topic I was questioning, but it does have a chapter on evolution and what it means for human nature. The chapter's focus is somewhat the opposite of what I was writing about; I was interested in the origin of evil while the author, Francisco Ayala, is concerned with the origin of good.
Actually, "good" may be too vague a term. He's considering the origin of ethics, which are not quite the same as goodness. He argues rather convincingly that human ethics are different from simple empathy or altruism, which can be seen in some animals. Ayala defines ethics by three traits that necessitate human-level intelligence: 1) the ability to anticipate the consequences of one's actions; 2) the ability to make value judgments; and 3) the ability to choose between alternative courses action. Those traits are innate to human beings, Ayala says, and so all societies have codes of ethics. The content of those ethics, however, is culturally determined. He compares it to language: everyone's brain is made for language so everyone speaks one, but there are many different languages out there.
It does seem to me that there is a difference between "animal pity" and ethics, which sometimes require you to do what you know is right even when your feelings tell you something else. This aspect of ethics cuts both ways, morally speaking: you can overcome your bad feelings by making yourself do good, but you can also overcome your good feelings, as when a misguided sense of duty leads a soldier to torture or kill innocents under orders. Yet there is a certain commonality to human ethical codes, at least the ones that I know of. They all involve some degree of subsuming self-interest to others, but the question is to what others. Family? Tribe? Race? Nation? Species? God?
Ayala doesn't really go into how this relates to Christian theology, though I expect Murphy will revisit it at the end of the book. One thing that's curious about his theory as that his second factor in ethics, making value judgments, or knowing good from evil, is what got humans into trouble in the Garden of Eden. It reminded me that in Telford's recent essay on the subject, he never quite explained why that piece of knowledge is the one thing forbidden. Telford explains the serpent's message to the humans thus: "In fact, you will die seeing and knowing the good and evil that God sees and knows. You will die with eyes wide open to what you have done."
Well, that explains why humans would know evil by eating the fruit -- by having disobeyed they will have done evil. But the Tree of Knowledge supposedly yields knowledge of good as well. Perhaps this is simply saying that without evil there is no contrast to call "good," though it still seems peculiar that the story would consistently describe the tree with both -- mentioning good first, in fact. If knowing good from evil is an innate capacity that humans have evolved, as Ayala asserts, how does this translate to the Fall? I mean, like Telford I take this story to be a fable, not history, but even as a fable this is rather problematic. But I will keep reading, and see what turns up.
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