Music, Corporate Culture, and Social Change

Odd convergences. News this morning that Odetta has passed away. A powerful voice for positive change, she embodied the authentic power that music has to make thye world a better place. At the same time, I've been pondering over a conversation I had this weekend with Alyson Gilbert, a country singer whom some may recognize from the television show Nashville Star on which she was a competitor. The producers of the program chose to put her in the country diva/pageant queen/bad girl role, but in reality nothing could be further from the truth. A kind and warm person (with an incredible voice), it brought home the way in which corporate interests harness the power of music to create an alternate reality, a fantasy world, designed first and foremost to make money. Starting perhaps with the Monkeys, there is the sense that pop stars can be created wholecloth by marketers, appealing to people's needs that go unsatisfied by life in contemporary culture and filling the gaps with the aesthetic equivalent of soylent green.

So, the combination of these two has left me thinking about the direction in which music is headed. It is a powerful force, but a force for what? With every band having its own MySpace page and the number of shows available for free download on sites like archive.org, is the role of the corporate gatekeeper declining in the way some claim? Are we seeing a democratization of access? Has the ipod and itunes ushered in the end of the age of the album in which music was produced and released in 45-60 minute chunks? Will this change how music is made and disseminated? How important is live performance? Does it become more important because that is the only place a performer can make a living or does it become a relic? What does any of this mean in terms of the power music has to make this society more fair, equitable, and good?

Soccer as Class Indicator

On the flight home last night, I was talking with a couple who had an adult child who was a lawyer and raising their grandchildren in a typically upper/upper-middle class suburban fashion. One element was to put the child in an orgnaized soccer league at 3 1/2 like everyone else.

It started me thinking about soccer as a class indicator. Soccer is popular around the world in part because it is easy to play, but hard to master, but also because you can play anywhere with anyone and only need one thing, a ball. It makes perfect sense why less affluent nations would take to soccer, but why has it become a mark of bourgieos life in contemporary America? Is it because it is the "not-football"? Because football is blue collar, it is full-contact, it is associated with communities that are not chock full of lawyers, doctors, and corporate middle managers? Or is it because it gives you a continental or more worldly sense, just like Thai food is so much more cosmopolitan than Chinese? Or is it something else? Why has soccer become a class indicator?

You Ain't Gonna Learn What You Don't Want to Know

Perhaps the most insightful of all of Robert Hunter's lyrics is the line, "You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know." But, that is the job of some folks...say, philosophers. How does one best motivate someone to learn something he or she does not want to know? Aspazia employs film and literature arguing that narrative allows an empathy that working at the conceptual level does not. By what means can we get people to look at things they don't want to see?

Tying the Knot

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This weekend our Playground playfriends Gwydion and Maura will be getting married. This week's Comedist post will thus be devoted to marriage. Please feel free to leave good wishes and marriage related jokes in the comments.

We wish the two so-to-be newly-weds all the best in health, joy, and timing and leave with a warning to our dear Gwydion, as Alan King explains, he may have just sealed his fate...



Best of luck Gwydion and Maura, we love you both very, very much. To you and everyone else,

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Does Age Really Bring Wisdom?

Does age really bring wisdom or is it more likely that young fools end up as old fools...those who survive, at least?

The Power (or Lack Thereof) of Symbolic Acts

Been thinking about symbolic acts lately and on Thanksgiving it seems appropriate to discuss. TheWife was reading an article that urged the President-Elect to take a large swath of the White House lawn and make it into an organic orchard as a symbol of commitment to sustainability. A number of my students have been fasting to bring attention to world hunger and injustice. I'm wondering about the function of such acts. The fact that I slept on and off in a cardboard box at the University of Maryland for a week most likely is not to be listed anywhere among the active factors that brought down the Apartheid government of South Africa. So, what, if anything, do such acts do? Are they for those acting, to give a sense of solidarity? Is it to make us think we are doing something to help alleviate our feelings of powerlessness in the face of deep, on-going injustice, the real causes of which are political and sociological and so much bigger than anything a well-intentioned individual can help overturn? Is it part of a PR campaign, that we are trying to get a movement started because while a few folks cannot do anything substantive, a large public outcry could?

From the "Irony Can Be So Ironic" File

Ann Coulter's Jaw Wired Shut. We wish a speedy recovery, of course, but couple this with the fact that Rahm Emmanuel lost part of his middle finger in an accident and you've got yet more evidence of the existence of the Cosmic Comic. Irony this ironic doesn't just happen people.

Big Three in Big Trouble

The American car makers are in BIG TROUBLE. I used to drive a Ford. I loved my Festiva. It had 305k miles on it when I traded it in. I'm the sort of person that ought to be the target for the American car makers. I drive a Honda and will not drive anything else. They lost me and a whole lot of folks like me by making cars that were not as good as the Japanese imports and were not as appropriate for the times.

Now the Republicans are barking mad about bailing out the auto companies that are in trouble for having produced nothing but massive SUVs as gas went up to $4/gallon. Of course, not everyone wanted them to make those cars. Some folks were trying to raise the mileage requirement, trying to get Detroit to produce gas/electric hybrids, and smaller vehicles in general. But they refused and at every turn, who was supporting them legislatively in this arguing that it was American to drive a big truck, that we don't punish the successful, that it is virtuous, but not the government's business to conserve energy? The very same people who are now blaming the car companies for mismanagement and refusing to give them help are the ones who were enabling them. Of course, there were Democrats on board too, Rep. Dingell for example.

Now, we've got calls from the Democrats to help bail them out because if they go under, along go LOTS of jobs directly and indirectly, like parts manufacturers, and with things already teetering will take a major shock. What's good for General Motors, it used to be said, was good for America. But there are strings attached. You don't give the junkie money to pay off his debts without sending him for treatment at the same time. There are calls for accountability and federal oversight. The government wants to be able to look over the shoulders of major corporations while they make decisions. The conservative fears are being realized, it is creeping socialism. In fact, the new GM models are going to be marketed as CHE-vrolets.

Are the bailouts really necessary? Is government oversight and conditions on what they choose to bring to market acceptable? necessary?

Is Campaign Finance Reform Dead? Should It Be?

Getting elected means getting your message out and that means advertising. Advertising means money and that means donations. In the decision Buckley v. Valeo, the Court asserted that money was speech, political speech is protected by the First Amendment and therefore, so are campaign contributions.

But, the line for campaign finance reform goes, money is not speech, but the ability to drown out other voices. If you have enough, you keep those who have less from being heard. Money is not the speech itself, it is the access to a bigger megaphone and that works fundamentally against the reason we have free speech, that in a free marketplace of ideas the best idea tends to win. Campaign finance reform is needed to level the playing field and let a wider variety of voices be heard to serve democracy.

But, in the last election, Barack Obama raised a half a billion dollars online from small donors. Suddenly, the small fish have banded together giving them the monetary pull of the bigger fish. Does this eliminate the need for campaign finance reform? Was this last election singular or is there something systemic that has been challenged? Do the central premises of the argument still hold up?

The Feast of Saint Voltaire

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This week saw the 314th birthday of François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire. Voltaire is the Comedist John the Baptist, he was a Comedist before there was Comedism. It was Voltaire after all who said,

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."

and

"If God did not exist, it would necessary to invent Him."

And so, inspired by Voltaire, we Comedists created this religion in order to gain the the inner-strength needed to squirt milk through our collective nose at the great punchlines of the Cosmic Comic.

And so this week, we ask for a partial accounting of God's great jokes. There is, of course, Robin Williams' nomination of the platypus.What other jokes has the Divine Comedian left for us to laugh at?

live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Politics and the History of 20th Century Philosophy

Last week's post about the interest in existentialism led to a discussion in comments about politics and the analytic/continental split in philosophy. It is probably worth discussing the political nature of that split.

For those who are not philosophers, the roughest version of the split is that analytics are the logic nerds and the continentals are the ones wearing black and getting dates. The details of the split and how the traditions came to be manifested in American universities is a bit more complex.

The early years of the 20th century in Europe were a time of great upheaval, politically and intellectually. With the end of World War I, the old structures lay in ruins. What had been the distribution of power for as long as anyone remembered was destroyed. What had been the undeniable mathematical and scientific beliefs for as long as anyone could remember were destroyed. What had been thought of as art, music, and architecture had been destroyed. In addition, the war itself, with its incredible brutality shocked the sensibilities of those who considered themselves the end of history, the pinnacle of existence. Trench warfare, chemical weapons, mass death, how could we have done that?

In Germany, which was on the cultural ascendant, the failure of the Wiemar government was widely taken as a sign that liberal, free market approach was bankrupt. Something new needed to take its place to prevent what just happened.

The analytic side took its clue from the non-Euclidean geometry and Einstein's theory of relativity. From these advances, they saw not only the need to radically revise all of our basic concepts, but to seek a way of justifying them that was science-like in not needing to appeal to the human intuition which could be so easily corrupted by politics and self-interest. We would try to ground all beliefs on that for which we could have evidence which could be observed by anyone. Further, the scientific community would serve as the basis for our view of the world. It was the scientists and mathematicians who collaborated across boundaries, who ignored artificial borders for the advancement of all humanity. The horrors of the period were due to nationalism and superstition, the sorts of falsehoods that prey on human frailty and need to be guarded against with scientific rigor.

The Continental side followed the lead of Edmund Husserl, a mathematician who saw the failure as one based upon the alienation of human experience from the conceptual basis used in our intellectual pursuits. Husserl's protege was Martin Heidegger who followed Husserl's approach called "phenomenology" and argued that the lived experience was no longer the foundation of our understanding of the world and this led to technologies and social systems that valued theory and ideology over human welfare.

This philosophical divide needs to be superimposed upon the political divisions of the time. Science was as political then as now. To be pro-scientific was generally to be left-leaning. And so the early analytics were largely socialists. Because of Cold War sloppiness, we often now conflate socialism with Communism, but the divide was something real and deep in interwar Germany and Austria where the socialists and the Communists were all but warring factions. There were a few notable exceptions. Karl Popper and Ludwig von Mises, for example, were champions of the free market and Otto Neurath leaned towards Marxism, but by in large, the bulk of the early analytic thinkers were socialists.

Heidegger's view was that the foundations of phenomenology were rooted in the individuality of the being and this led him to so oppose Communism that he became a member of the Nazi party, eventually turning his back on his own mentor Husserl because he was Jewish. Indeed, Heidegger removed the dedication to his masterwork Being and Time which had thanked Husserl for his influence.

But not all of those influenced by Heidegger shared his despicable politics. Hannah Arendt and the existentialists like Sartre, de Beauvior, and Camus took up the phenomenological approach, but were opposed to Nazism.

At the same time, in Frankfurt there arose a group of intellectuals who were explicitly neo-Marxist. Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse were amongst the leading lights of this group. They joined the phenomenologists in arguing that the analytic approach, specifically positivism, was deeply flawed.

When Hitler came to power and purged the universities, all of these groups had to flee -- with the exception of Heidegger who became rector of the university in Freiburg, a very prestigious position. Others -- those who managed to escape, and not all of them did -- took positions in Britain and the US. Many of the neo-Marxists of Frankfurt found a home in New York at Columbia University and the New School where they influenced the American "New Left."

The analytics, on the other hand, settled across the country taking positions in Los Angeles, Chicago, Princeton, Minnesota, Iowa. The positivists were less strident politically when they emigrated here. The end of the war had brought McCarthyism and it struck the analytics as worrisome to see the beginning of what they had just left. As guests who were under suspicion for having German accents, they toned down the political end of the project and focused on the technical. Indeed, some of the analytics became the first hires at the Rand Corporation. But this must be understood in its context. Rand was formed by the Air Force to be a think tank focusing on basic research without concern for particular military use, but whose work could then be used as the military saw useful. As such, it was a chance to develop things like game theory whose foundations von Neumann and Helmer developed at Rand. In this way, analytic philosophy in the 50's became apolitical while the continental side maintained its overt political sensibility.

This may be why it appears to some that Continental thought is to be aligned with our political left while analytic is to be aligned therefore with the right. But this is not at all true. While Quine was politically conservative, he was unusual in that sense. Indeed, as Aspazia points out the work of Francis Fukuyama is part of the basis of neo-conservativism and pulls from contemporary continental thought. There simply is no neat mapping of the analytic/continental divide onto the contemporary American political split.

A Deal Lieberman Couldn't Refuse?

Seems to me that there are four possible explanations for the Lieberman fiasco:

(1) The caucus believes that they are at 60 with Begich and Franken and the super-majority was more important than Lieberman's behavior.

(2) Obama is serious about ending partisanship as we know it and used this as a symbol of that change.

(3) The weak-kneed, spineless DC Dems collapsed yet again because that's just what they do.

(4) Obama reached into his bag of Chicago and had a conversation that went something like this:

Obama: (sitting behind his desk, petting a cat)Why did you go to McCain? Why didn't you come to me first?

Lieberman: What do you want of me? Tell me anything. But do what I beg you to do.

Obama: What is that?

Lieberman: The chairmanship of Homeland Security.

Obama: That I cannot do.

Lieberman: I'll give you anything you ask.

Obama: We've known each other many years, but this is the first time you ever came to me for counsel, for help. I can't remember the last time that you invited me to your office for a cup of coffee, even though I supported you in your primary run against Lamont. But let's be frank here, you never wanted my friendship and you were afraid to be in my debt.

Lieberman: I didn't want to get into trouble.

Obama: I understand. You found paradise in the Senate, had a good committee assignment, made a good living. Fox News protected you; and there was David Broder. And you didn't need a friend like me. But now you come to me and you say -- "Barack Obama, give me Homeland Security." -- But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me President-Elect. Instead, you come into my house after I win the election, and you ask me for justice.

Lieberman: Not justice, I ask you for Homeland Security.

Obama: That is not justice; you still have your seat even after losing the primary...Lieberman, Lieberman, what have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? Had you endorsed me, then this chairmanship would be yours, even if you supported the war. And that by chance if an honest man such as yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.

Lieberman: Be my friend -- President-Elect? (Lieberman kisses Obama's ring)

Obama: Good. Some day, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you for a vote. But, until that day -- accept Homeland Security as a gift on my election day.

Lieberman (as he leaves the room): Grazie, President-Elect.

Obama: Prego.

Gettysburg Address and Proposition to Which We Must Now Be Dedicated

It was 145 years ago today that Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at a ceremony dedicating the cemetery to hold those slain in the battle. It is a spot I pass every morning. While the old part of the cemetery has small markers arranged in a circle, the fallen grouped by state, the headstones in the newer section holding the remains of those who fought in later wars glow white with an eerie symmetry in the morning sun. The pattern -- straight, offset lines of smooth regular beveled rectangles -- stands out against the trees and rolling hills of the battlefield on which it is set. This artificiality, the unmistakable touch of man, contrasts with the beauty of Nature and gives a stark sense of the difference between the world we live in and that which we choose to do to it and to each other.

But Lincoln's words, which one cannot help but think of in passing this place, appeal to the other side of our nature, to that which creates worlds of insight, justice, and wisdom. Lincoln spoke of being "dedicated to the unfinished work," pointing to our "poor power to add or subtract" in the face of the struggles of those living and dead who gave their lives to advance freedom. We are part of an ongoing process, a path that we must approach thoughtfully, dedicated to propositions, among them that all people are created equal.

It is not accidental that he stresses the place of this proposition, as he knew well that propositions matter. Lincoln was a man of both words and deeds, a thoughtful actor. At this propitious moment in time, his words are as prescient as ever.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Let's hope that we too are on the verge of a new birth of freedom and let me ask you what are other propositions to which we must now be dedicated in order to bring it about.

The Ghost of Jackie Mitchell Smiles

Eri Yoshida has been drafted to play professional baseball.

A 16-year-old schoolgirl with a mean knuckleball has been selected as the first woman ever to play alongside the men in Japanese professional baseball.

Eri Yoshida was drafted for a new independent league that will launch in April, drawing attention for a side-armed knuckler that her future manager Yoshihiro Nakata said was a marvel.

This could not happen here because there is a rule banning women from American professional baseball.

The rule followed the success of Jackie Mitchell. Mitchell grew up in Memphis where she lived next to future Hall of Fame pitcher Dazzy Vance who noticed the young girl's talent. At five years old, he taught her mechanics and how to throw a breaking ball. She grew up playing in women's leagues, but at 16 her talent earned her an offer from the AA Chattenooga Lookouts. She played for them during the 1931 season.

It was the preseason, however, that carved Jackie's name in baseball history. On their way back north from spring training, the New York Yankees scheduled a tune up scrimage game against the Lookouts. The Lookout's starting pitcher came in and quickly gave up two hits and a run, so the manager yanked him and put in Mitchell. The number three slot in the 1931 Yankees' line-up, of course, belonged to Babe Ruth. Mitchell's first pitch was high, well out of the strike zone, but the next two were both called strikes. For her fourth pitch, she threw Vance's drop pitch and struck out the Sultan of Swat.

As he threw down his bat amidst ribbing from his teammates for being struck out by a girl, the number four batter stepped up, Lou Gehrig. On three pitches, she sent the Iron horse back to the dugout. Back to back, Mitchell struck out two of the greatest hitters to ever hold a bat.

Days later, the league made it an official policy that women could not play professional baseball and Mitchell's contract was nullfied. This discriminatory rule remains in american baseball to this day. But now, Japan has put Jackie Mitchell's dream back into the realm of the possible.

Is the Protestant Work Ethic Ethical?

Been thinking about Max Weber's work lately and in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he considers the fact that Catholics at the time held significantly less power and wealth throughout Europe than their Protestant counterparts. One of the factors he examines is cultural difference in terms of attitudes towards work.

Is hard work intrinsically virtuous? There is no doubt that it can be taken to an extreme and, sure, that is problematic. But take two co-workers, one who takes initiative and plugs away and gets everything done as efficiently as possible, while the other does only what is asked and not a lick more and who takes his time getting done what he does. Or, alternatively, one student who studies hard, outlines the text, works sample problems and gets good grades while another with all the same aptitude, skates through with C's. We can call the one a better employee and one the better student, but is this a reflection of character, does this make either one a better person than their colleague? Is our inclination towards the hard worker something ingrained in us because of its benefits for the big boss man or is it an indication of something deeper?

Humor and Power

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This weekend I want to discuss a wonderful essay by Bernard Chazelle entitled The Humorology of Power, over at a Tiny Revolution which was pointed out to me by good brother Ron. It is thoughtful, well argued, and well-stocked with plenty of good jokes. Well worth the read.

His argument proceeds in three steps. First, humor is a manifestation of power. The act of joking is an act that declares the joker's superiority. Even self-deprecating humor is a play on irony because by putting oneself down, one is really saying, Chazelle's line goes, that I am so far superior that I can pretend to be inferior without insecurity.

The second point, playing off of this, is that humor cannot be a force for liberation. "If humor could have a driving political purpose (and I doubt that it can), it would have to reflect a certain totalitarian temptation. Laughter is a reactionary impulse and humor is, at its root, a call for order. Crudely put, the humorist is a nag—or, to be technical about it, a law enforcement officer." Humor cannot liberate because "humor must knock down empathy in order to kill fantasy."

His final point is that humor often uses reflexivity, self-reference to create absurdities. These absurdities then play upon distribution of power.

Chazelle provides some provocative theses here, but there seem to be some places where it could use some tightening. First of all, surely the general claim that joking is a declaration of superiority is far too broad, even if we consider humor about power. Consider, for example, Colin Quinn's bit on why the Irish were the only country in Europe not to have colonies, a bit that I seem not to be able to find (free entrance into Comedy heaven if anyone can find it and provide a link) in which he portrays the last minutes preparations before the Irish army is about to board the boats and a voice from the back asks "So when we get there, will we be bringin' the beer or will they be providing it?... Oh. Well, you can count me out, I'll tell you that right now." This is reflection on a lack of political power through imploring negative stereotypes of ones own group, not sure this one can be spun to back up the thesis. In the case of the Holocaust jokes, one could always make the move that being able to laugh at it showed that it failed, but here you cannot make that move because it is not, say, playing off the British.

I'd also take issue with the second claim that humor cannot be liberating. I think this is utterly false because it misses the power inherent in the very structure of the act of joking. A joke has two parts, a set-up and a punchline. The set up leads the listener to create a possible world through interpreting the words in the natural way. The punchline is funny because it forces us to realize that we need to radically reinterpret what we understood in the set-up in a very different fashion. The humor resides in the space in between when our mind is trying its hardest to square these incommensurable interpretations and failing every way it twists them. That's what "getting the joke" is, that's why someone who telegraphs a joke is not funny.

In other words, the entire structure of a joke relies on being able to see the world in two ways, one primary and one secondary. The primary interpretation is the one we naturally leap to and that is why we need it in the set-up for the joke to work. but the power of the secondary interpretation is that we now see the butt of the joke in a way we had not before, there has been a shifting of the categories we use to make sense of the world and we now have an enlarged perspective. This enlarging is the key to humor's ability to liberate.

Groups are placed into cultural bondage largely by being pigeon-holed,by being shrunk down to caricatures which are then reinforced by carefully selected examples that we are able to find. But when we joke about these groups, especially when those groups joke about themselves, they are able to rehumanize themselves in the eyes of those outside the group, they are able to reinflate their image making them as a group multi-dimensional. Think of the social power of television shows like "Good Times" or "The Jeffersons" in creating complex images of the African American family in the 1970's. The jokes were indeed vehicles of liberation.

A few other categories of power humor that Chazell did not mention that is worth considering:

The political pun -- Anyone who supported the Khmer Rouge must have been smoking Pol Pot.

The false analogy absurdism -- If Obama wants to be President of all Americans, he'd have to be President of first graders, too. "O.k. kids, can you spell 'Arugala'?"

The false history that embeds with a tragic reality -- I don't know if you know this, but originally Hitler didn't exclude the Jews and homosexuals. It's just that they kept making trouble at the early National Socialist meetings.

"Excuse me, but vat's vit the brown shoyts? Ve vear black pents and the black and the brown don't vork so vell together."

"You know, I've just got to say my two cents here also, because while I'm not put off by earth tones, especially in Autumn, the brown shirts definitely need a collar and maybe a pair of khakis, something with a pleat. It is looking so "thug" right now and that went out with the Kaiser."

"Hey, what's this about a Beer Hall putsch...more like a Beer Hall putz if you ask me."

"Instead of a beer hall, there's this other bar down the street..."

"Hey, hey, hey, what's with the hate here calling us 'sheckel grabbers' and 'schmeckle grabbers', that's pretty funny coming from a Schickelgruber!"

"Well, maybe we don't want to be part of your group!"

"Fine."

It seems to me that humor is a multifaceted thing, something that forces us to see the world in many different ways and anything that stretches us can be a force for good.

Favorite political jokes?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

The Red King's Dream

In Through the Looking Glass, Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee show Alice the sleeping Red King and tell her that she is merely a part of his dream.

`It's only the Red King snoring,' said Tweedledee.

`Come and look at him!' the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.

`Isn't he a LOVELY sight?" said Tweedledum.

Alice couldn't say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud -- `fit to snore his head off!' as Tweedledum remarked.

`I'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,' said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl.

`He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: `and what do you think he's dreaming about?'

Alice said `Nobody can guess that.'

`Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. `And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'

`Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.

`Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. `You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'

`If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, `you'd go out -- bang! -- just like a candle!'

`I shouldn't!' Alice exclaimed indignantly. `Besides, if I'M only a sort of thing in his dream, what are YOU, I should like to know?'

`Ditto' said Tweedledum.

`Ditto, ditto' cried Tweedledee.

He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying, `Hush!

You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise.'

`Well, it no use YOUR talking about waking him,' said Tweedledum, `when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.'

`I AM real!' said Alice and began to cry.

`You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying,' Tweedledee remarked: `there's nothing to cry about.'

`If I wasn't real,' Alice said -- half-laughing though her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous -- `I shouldn't be able to cry.'

`I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.

`I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought to herself: `and it's foolish to cry about it.'

Is it nonsense?

The dream argument plays prominntly in Descartes' version of skepticism where he argues that every thought could be false because it could all be the result of a dream. Every thought, that is, except that the self exists because there must be a self to have the dream.

But this is what Carroll is questioning here. Does the ability to think guarantee independent existence? Could your thoughts be a part of the dream of someone else? Is "I think, therefore I am" invalid? Should it read "I think, therefore someone -- maybe me, maybe not -- is"? Could parts of your dreams have thoughts or do they just appear to have thoughts in the dream? Could they think if they were your thoughts is it inconsistent to think of such things as capable of thought?

Existenitalism and Young Intellectuals

Why is existentialism so popular among young intellectuals? Is it that the angst and freedom appeal to people at the phase of life when they are typically angst-ridden and on their own, just starting the project of creating their adult selves? Or does it have nothing to do with the doctrine itself and is merely the result of good PR in which the term "existenitalism" has become a stand in for "philosophical" in the parlance of smart kids of approximately that age? If we taught philosophy in the high schools would the attraction to existentialism wane?

Student Entitlement or the Usual Whining?

Interesting article in the National Post, "'Entitled' Students Expect Better Grades". The thesis of the piece is that students today widely believe that in college moderate effort ought to necessarily translate into good grades:

Most university students believe that if they're "trying hard," a professor should reconsider their grade.

One-third say that if they attend most of the classes for a course, they deserve at least a B, while almost one-quarter "think poorly" of professors who don't reply to e-mails the same day they're sent.

Those are among the revelations in a newly published study examining students' sense of academic entitlement, or the mentality that enrolling in post-secondary education is akin to shopping in a store where the customer is always right.

The paper describes academic entitlement as "expectations of high marks for modest effort and demanding attitudes toward teachers."

It is, of course, the birthright of every generation to complain that kids these days are a bunch of lazy slobs who don't work as hard as I did when I was their age and had to (fill in the blank with absurd task happily engaged in under great duress). The right to whine, however, does not mean that the whine is legitimate.

But, is it?

I'm not sure I would say that this generation is any different from mine, but then maybe we were entitled in the same way. At the same time, taking up the crotchety side of the argument, there is no doubt that many students expect to be spoon-fed and not have to work much outside of the classroom. They think that explicitly assigned readings and homework are all they are expected to do on their own. Further, lectures are not only expected to be miraculous in conveying the information, but also edutainment as lively and engaging as a live theatrical performance.

I've taught at nine different schools including community college, state universities, a Catholic college, private liberal arts schools, and a military academy, so I've seen a wide sample of students from any number of demographic categories and pretty much across the board study skills, by in large, seem not to be terribly good anywhere. Students where I am now, for example, complain bitterly about having to take foreign language classes, something that is purely a matter of putting in the time and slogging through the hard process of rewiring part of your brain. "I'm not good at languages," I hear more times than I can count. Of course, pretty much no one is good at them; it just takes the discipline to put in the time, practice, and drilling. Perhaps that is anecdotal evidence for the claim? Of course, it is not terribly good evidence and I'm not convinced that the sense of entitlement is as drastic as portrayed in the article. The phrase "gentleman's C" goes back a long way before this current crop of students.

so, is this a caricature of this generation, just the newest instantiation of "those whippersnappers", "those kids with their rock and roll music", "those dirty hippies with their drugs and free love" or is this inflated sense of entitlement real and unique to this generation? Is it new? Is it a result of the institutionalization of grade inflation? of an unreasonable tenuring process? of high school preparation? Or is it all just the curmudgeonly kvetching of bitter old people?

The Meaing of Bachelor Parties

Thinking about wedding rituals today becasue (1) it is LilBro's anniversary (LilBro -- don't forget, man, it's your anniversary), and (2) one of us here at the Playground is getting married very soon and I am playing a role in the ceremony.

TheWife and I have a longstanding argument about rituals in general. She loves them because they bring certain practices into the regular routine of life and those practices can be attached to that which is meaningful, therefore making routine life more meaningful. I argue that the rutualizalation itself strips the meaning away by making it mere motions that are gone thorugh instead of an authentic spontenaous act of appreciation of that which is meaningful.

Weddings, it seems can go either way. LilBro and our friend are going the non-standard wedding route in which they create their own ritual, personalized to express what they and their partners find meaningful. But then there are standard parts before the ritual, specifically, the bachelor party.

The bachelor party was oringinally a celebration of the last night of freedom, but marriage nowadays begins well before the wedding. No one about to get married, in a sense is free the night before the wedding. Certainly, there are those who celebrate with the traditional sorts of debauchery. But for those of us for whom that would not even be considered an option for ethical and social/politcal reasons, what remains of the meaning of the bachelor party?

Sure, it is a celebration of oneself, but is it different from a birthday party? Mine was a poker game with dear friends, one of whom hit me with a coconut cream pie -- for Comedists, this is a deeply meaningful event and I will be ever-grateful to my firends for having colluded to this end. But in general, for enlightened men, what is the meaning of the bachelor party?

The Problem of Non-Evil

Is the standard notion of heaven self-consistent? Can you have both the necessary freedom from suffering and freedom of the will for those in heaven? If you say that there is no suffering in heaven because the only people allowed in are those who would never choose to inflict it, then it is not necessary, but contingent. There could be suffering in heaven, but there just happens not to be because of the choices. On the other hand, if God can guarantee it, say, by over-ruling or correcting for free choices that would inflict suffering on others in heaven, then it surely is a much less robust notion of free will than we would want. There is no corresponding problem with the concept of hell, because we could strip away free will or not and still have plenty of suffering, but with heaven we seem to have a concern. So, can the freedom of the will and freedom from suffering be reconciled in a way that saves necessity?

Passing the Plate

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

I will be at a conference all weekend without a chance to give a proper homily. I do humbly apologize. But, as with any church, there is always time to pass the plate. Others ask for money, but we ask that you tithe jokes. So, dig deep, my friends.

I was asked by a student in class Friday what my favorite joke is. Turns out it is here (the last one). But it seems a good question to throw out to the congregation. What is your favorite joke?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

(Good brother RonZ, next weekend will be the post I promised...I promise)

Why Do You Know That?

Here's a new something that is probably worth trying and if it goes well, maybe we'll make it an irregular. It's the converse of "any questions." The idea is to contribute those bits of knowledge that seem really cool even if they are not directly applicable to anything.

-- The letters YKK that you find on many zippers stands for the initials of Yoshida Company Limited transliterated from Japanese.

-- Hamsters can run up to seven miles a night on their little exercise wheels.

-- Charles Darwin's grandfather was Josiah Wedgwood of Wedgwood china, the father of English potters.

-- We can dream at any point during the sleep cycle, not just during REM sleep.

-- Original title of the Beatles' song "Yesterday" was "Scrambled Eggs."

What some some interesting factoids that you know for no good reason?

Not So Black and White

When Branch Rickey gave Jackie Robinson the chance to play on the Brooklyn Dodgers, it was historic. It was an important point in the narrative of race that is an essential thread for anyone who wants to understand our national story. But, be clear, it was not evidence that we were not a racist society. Indeed, it provided a context to demonstrate exactly how racist we, in fact, were.

There has been a tidal wave of American self-congratulations in the last day on how wonderful we are to have elected an African-American, how we are the only country in the world in which this sort of thing could happen, and how we stand apart from all other nations morally because it. I am in no way saying it is not a fantastic result. "Content of his character" is sadly becoming a cliche, but Obama's brains, rock-steady temperament, and care for people combine to truly make him what I believe will be a once in a lifetime leader at a time when we really, really, really need one. Like Jackie Robinson, no doubt it took someone so disciplined and talented to make it to the office. A black George W. Bush could never have made it.

But this election is not black and white. It was not a demonstration of having gone quite so far in terms of our embrace of difference and an end to bigotry. Yes, it was a tremendous step forward, but just as with the Jackie Robinson case, that step afforded the opportunity to avoid the Disneyesque approach we seem to be caught up in and to take an honest appraisal of what just happened in this election.

We saw both Democratic and Republicans race-baiting. The Clintons and their surrogates like Geraldine Ferrarro and many on the right did not make overtly racist attacks, but did clearly use dog-whistle means of invoking race to try to gain a political advantage. They used racists as tools, as convenient idiots. Should we be proud of the facts that they kept this to a significantly lower degree than they could have and that it did not ultimately work? Sure. But let's not kid ourselves, and no one with an e-mail address and conservative family members surely can.

But the real intolerance and bigotry came out in other ways. It took Colin Powell to say, and so what if we was a Muslim. Anti-Islamic bigotry was rampant. "He's an Arab." "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man. A citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about. He's not." A decent family man, as opposed to an Arab...

Then there was the Liddy Dole ad that accused Senator-elect Kay Hagen of being, gasp, an atheist. No, no, no, people rushed to her aid, she's a Sunday school teacher and an elder in her Presbyterian church. Dole got slammed for the ad and it may have been one of the things that ultimately cost her her seat. but was it because it was false or was it because we still see "atheist" as a hit below the belt. Godless clearly means immoral, right?

But perhaps the most disgusting result of the night were the ballot initiatives in California, Arizona, and Florida that wrote into law provisions stripping rights from our fellow citizens who happen to be gay and lesbian. Jim Crow is back, or at least Jim Crow's gay child. The law has been changed to enforce bigotry and hatred. This is horrific, but that it happened while we are all so busy back-slapping ourselves about how open-minded we are puts it clearly in the "irony can be so ironic" file.

It Wasn't An Election, It Was An Intervention

Rest of the world, it's o.k., we're back on our meds. The prodigal nation has returned.

Random thoughts about the election:

Obama won in large part because he ran a different sort of campaign in so many ways:

(1) No drama. Discipline. The focus was always on Obama and never on the inside of the organization. Additionally, he was never dramatic in the debates, but rather cool and steady and that gave him his teflon against the "he's so scary" and "he's naive" attacks because he seemed incredibly in control and reasonable.

(2) His people included precious few of the standard issue D.C. insider consultants who only know how to effectively lose to Republicans. The Democratic party has been the Washington Generals of American politics for the last two decades. He used his own people and brought in a new mindset.

(3) He played smarter, not just harder. He beat McCain the same way he beat Clinton -- he figured out how to play the game according to the rules. His team figured out that if he did well in caucus states during the primaries, he could get an insurmountable lead. Similarly, that he could lock up a number of votes by working states the have early voting. These are people who are strategic.

But there are others who played a huge role. Obama could not have done what he did if it was not for Howard Dean. In his own run in 2004, Dean's supporters created the web infrastructure that Obama's people stepped in and supercharged. His run also galvanized the anti-institutional wing of the Democratic party which turned en masse against Hilary who represented the old (loser) guard of the Democratic party. Once he was made head of the Democratic National Committee, he turned the party from a 17 state party that only focused on safe very blue regions and sucked money from state parties into D.C. to only focus on top of the ticket national races into a 50 state party that send money from D.C. into places Democrats had never been seen in order to run for everything from dog catcher on up.

Hilary Clinton was another whose contributions can't be overlooked. Her campaigning may have done a little, but it is nothing compared to what her kitchen sink, refuse to die primary run did. It gave Obama all the calluses, used up all the negative attacks the GOP could have thrown, making them all old news. It allowed him to set up and test his ground game in all 50 states and gave him early databases full of ardent supporters who could then be tapped in the general to lead the get out the vote efforts. Hilary's never ending campaign worked as a tough practice scrimmage for the Obama organization, who could then look at all the parts and see what needed tweaking and what ran smoothly.

The contribution of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George W., and the religious right in general cannot be overlooked. Dover, Katrina, and the lack of WMDs in Iraq undd everything Rove worked so hard to do. Reagan and Clinton won by winning both their respective bases and the middle. Gore and Kerry tried to do the same, but Rove decided to simply eliminate the middle, forcing a complete split in the electorate with the idea that their half is more likely to vote. The country was intentionally and incredibly divided for the purpose of electing Republicans. The utter failure of Bush's reign which was predicated upon Rove's notion that you don't have to govern if you just continually campaign (and campaign negatively) undid the divide by making the center so disgusted by both the tone of the campaigning and the incompetence of the administration that they reappeared in a way that left them open to a great Democratic candidate.

Finally, there was also Steve Schmidt and John McCain who ran an incoherent campaign based on tricks and tactics. They did virtually nothing with the five weeks after his nomination while Obama and Clinton battled it out. That's not to mention the Palin selection. Aside from that, they ran the same exact campaign as Clinton did: experience, then experience to bring change, then I'm a fighter, then kitchen sink. It didn't work the first time and it didn't work the second time.

Other election issues:

Abortion ballot initiative aborted in South Dakota, but damned homophobic ballot measures pass, even in California. Culture War not pulling the troops out all together, but apparently putting reinforcements on bringing out Jim Crow's gay child, Jamie Crow.

Tim Mahoney, the adulterous lying scumbag that took Tom Foley's seat in Florida, lost big. That's a good thing.

Liddy Dole goes down. Thank God for Godless Americans.

Chris Shays, the last Republican representative in New England, is gone. Maybe now the GOP will see the wisdom of the Endangered Species Act.

Neo-McCarthyist Michelle Bachman looks to have destroyed El Tinklinberg's bid to become the first member of Congress to have a name that sounds like a Jewish-Mexican character from Peter Pan.

Got phone polled by one of the big pollsters last night during the returns. All the usual questions, except one: "How often do you shop at WalMart?" Very interesting.

Looking like Ted Stevens was re-elected AFTER his seven count felony conviction for corruption. Apparently salmon is not the only thing that gets smoked up there.

Bullshit or Not: Plato the Elitist Edition

There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, "In Search Of..." called, "Bullshit or Not?" with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that I've stolen it for an irregular series of posts.

It seems only appropriate today to focus on democracy. Plato, of course, was an opponent of democracy and it would be interesting to kick around his reasoning to see what folks think. The gist is that democracy is an inferior brand of government because it puts the power in the hands of the unwashed masses who are insufficiently thoughtful to handle it well.

Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering --every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them. Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not-the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer's art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling. Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing?

So, bullshit or not? You decide. As usual, feel free to leave anything from a one word comment to a dissertation.

Prognostificationizing

YKW throws down the gauntlet:

Predict the time at which any of the major TV and/or cable news networks calls the election Tuesday night. Price is Right rules (closest prediction without going over – i.e., if you guess 11:08 and the event happens at 11:09, you lose to the person who picked 11:30). We avoid the Price is Right underbidding problem (one dollar!) since no one on the blog responses would know if they were the last bidder when making a submission.

The Normativity of Handwriting

So, the bigger of the short people is learning cursive and has that chart we've all seen countless times displaying the right way to write the letters. But is there a right way to write? Sure, we all have our own handwriting, but on what basis should we judge handwriting? It does seem a bit strange to say, "This is the right way" when I make mine differently and don't feel as if I'm not actually writing, say, a capital G or writing it wrong.

There seems to be three options:

(1) Handwriting Platonism: these folks see the chart as positing the Form of cursive, that is, that perfect, unchanging nature of cursive handwriting and each person's own script partakes of the Form, but is an imperfect representation. Better handwriting is handwriting that is more like the ideal.

(2) Handwriting Subjectivism: there is no such thing as right and wrong, there is simply the way each of us writes. Better or worse is just I like it better or I don't, or it is functionally more useful, easier to read or not. It is your handwriting, write as you will, who is to tell you how to make a lower case q.

(3) Handwriting Pluralism: A middle path in which there are multiple ways to acceptably right a cursive S, but not all ways are allowable. There is a range that you need to fall in, but outside that range is unacceptable.

So, which one is right or have I missed the real answer?

Halloween and the World's Scariest Candy

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

For those who will be in the Baltimore area, I'll be appearing at T.Brad Hudson's "Drink 'til We're Funny" at Damon's in Hunt Valley Sunday night. The show runs 9-11. Love to see those who can make it.

Halloween came and went. It's always a tough time for us because TheWife and I are those parents everyone is glad they don't have. You know, those vegetarian organic tofu for dinner parents. The "we keep our kids away from candy" parents. So, Halloween is a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, you want them to have the experience of trick or treating, but on the other hand, for kids who can't eat candy, it is kind of like taking a eunuch to a brothel on customer appreciation night.

So, we take them trick or treating. My son had an eye patch and a bandana, a fake parrot and a sword. He went as an investment bank CEO. Unfortunately, all the homes we visited were soon foreclosed upon afterwards because only one person in the neighborhood actually bought candy, all the others just bought insurance against running out of treats before the end of the trick or treaters, the unregulated so-called candy default swaps. If you buy one from your next door neighbor, they call you an across the hedge fund. Everything was going fine until Mr. Lehman ran out of M&M's, and then the whole house of cards came down. All the kids started calling in candy iou's for the next few Halloweens and it got ugly. On the upside, our last stop was the Paulson's and the kids came home with 780 billion fun-sized Milky Way bars.

Gotta love candy. "Almond Joy's got nuts, Mounds don't." I always wondered what this chick Joy was doing was nuts. Shouldn't she be the one with the mounds? Candy jokes never get big laughs, but good ones get a few snickers.

Have you heard about the newest candy on the market? From the Vosges' Chocolate Company, there's Mo's Bacon Bar. Yup, three ounces of milk chocolate with crispy pieces of Applewood smoked bacon inside.

I don't blame Mo for this. We all have ideas that seemed good at the time. I blame the second person. We all have a second person, someone we excitedly take those ideas that seemed good at the time, the person whose job it is to say, "Ummmm, no." The person who keeps us off the Darwin Award list, who keeps us from ending up like Wile E. Coyote. This was a failure of the second person. I would love to have been in that corporate meeting room:

"O.k., Mo. What do you folks in R&D got for us this time?"

"Follow me, Mr. Vosges. The key to success in the food industry today? Synergy. Think fast-food. Bacon. Chesseburger. Bacon-cheeseburger. Think ice cream and Pop Tarts. Graham crackers. Chocolate. Marshmallow. Synergistic smory goodness. So, what can we do to move ahead in this market? We need to outsynergize the synergizers. Take the bacon-cheeseburger and the smore and synergize.

Stay with me. Graham crackers. Chocolate. Two slices of bacon. Instead of a marshmallow, a big piece of fat back. What do you think, Mr. Vosges?"

"Mo, I like the concept. But my father, the old man Vosges, didn't build this company up from nothing without knowing something about the business and he always said to me, 'Simplify, son, simplify.' So, Mo, can you simplify?"

"O.k., Mr. Vosgas. Simplify. Let's take away the graham crackers and the fat back. Just chocolate covered bacon!"

"Mo, you're a genius. Now, how are we going to market it? What can we call it?"

"O.k., we have bacon from a BLT and chocolate from an M&M, we'll call it BM. No, no, no. We have crunchy chocolate and pork, like a Crackle and Scrapple. We'll call it Crapple, no, Scrackle."

"Simplify, Mo, simplify."

"O.k., we have a chocolate bar and bacon, we'll call it a Bacon Bar!"

"Mo, you're a genius. This'll sell better than our fried shrimp candy canes! In fact, we'll make our big push around Valentine's Day. Sell them in a heart shaped box for lovers. We can write on the box, "Want to pork something sweet? Put a little oink in your boink."

"Mr. Vosges. That's why you're the boss."

"Thanks, Mo."

Happy Halloween everyone!

Live, laugh, and love,

Irreverend Steve

Boo Who?

Let's end the week of questions with a Halloween special from Aurora Geoes to Washington:

What is it that we should be scared of the most? And of course, why should this be our biggest fear?

The answer, of course, is contextual. If you are one of my logic students, then exam 3 on first-order predicate logic up through relations would likely top the list. For the rest of us, it's the twin meltdowns of the economy and the polar ice caps. Bad economic times means the large scale chipping away of (a) the sense of security that is more conducive to a life lived beyond present and basic pressing needs and allows us to occupy a space where we can more easily live deeper and meaningful lives for ourselves and others, and (b) actual security in terms of increased crime and desparation which brings out the worst in us. Global warming will only exacerbate this by (a) creating more natural catastrophes whose aftermaths we will be in a less favorable situaiton to deal with, not to mention in an emotional bunker where we will be less likely to be moved to help, and (b) causing problems with water which will give rise to additional geopolitical stressors.

That's mine. Others?

Fear, Love, and Experimental Philosophy

JMH asks,

Why do people fear the unknown?

Humans are amazing in this way. We will fight change even when it would benefit us. While I generally do not buy into a lot of the larger claims of evolutionary psychology, I do think that this is the fear of the unknown is a result of our biology. Anyone who has ever set foot in a classroom know how territorial we are. Marketers know perfectly well about the strength of brand loyalty. We are creatures of habit and that which breaks our habits worries us. The fear of the unknown is so widespread that I think it is programmed. I will not try to create a hypothetical made-up history which posits a possible advantage for the fear -- that's exactly what I think is problematic in some of the evolutionary psychology that gets floated -- but it does seem biological in nature.

71 asks,

do you think x-phi [experimental philosophy] is a worthwhile endeavor? if so, is it a philosophical endeavor? can it help to shed light on some of the really tough philosophical problems, or are the basic assumptions it's working with problematic? and, finally, what do you think of the flaming armchair?

We just happen to have an expert on this on the playground...jeff.maynes?

The way philosophy generally works is that we come up with a hard question, figure out what our intuition is, and then try to come up with an account to justify our intuitions. It turns out that some of these intuitions are about things we can test or at least we can test how widely these intuitions are shared. It will be interesting to see how far this goes. It clearly links into neuroscience and there is always the temptation to be reductionist. Sometimes it is warranted, other times not, but I think it will make at least as many new philosophical questions as it will answer longstanding issues.

Hanno asks

How many song lines from any song do you know that contain "Love is x" where x is a placeholder for any term or phrase that makes the sentence complete? Give as many examples as you can. Band name a bonus.

Love is all you need, Love is in the air, Love is all around,... Others?

Death, Hockey, and Love

A pair of questions from C.Ewing. First,

Is there an important distinction between "clinically dead" and "dead"? Is there a lingering dualism within that phrasing or something else entirely?

Yes, there is a difference. "Dead" is the explicandum and "clinically dead" is the explicans.

The godfather of analytic philosophy Rudolf Carnap argued that the job of the philosopher is explication, that is, taking a word in ordinary, spoken language which is vague, ambiguous, and altogether semantically mushy and to set out an explication of it, that is, devise a set of rigorous, clean, testable conditions to give the term a meaning that would not give rise to pseudoproblems, questions that look like real philosophical questions, sound like real philosophical questions, but aren't real philosophical questions, rather they are linguistic muddles, errors that arise from the lack of sharp delineation in meaning.

Death is one of those mushy terms. We think we know what it means and in most cases the mushiness doesn't cause any real problems, but in cases dealing with end of life issues like organ donation or persistent vegetative states, the lack of clarity does cause problems. To resolve this, we come up with "clinical death" a term that is meant to cover the sense we have of death, but with clearly delineated conditions by which we can judge whether someone is dead in this sense.

Second, we have this one:

Hockey. Is it just soccer for people in a cold climate or a legitimate sport on its own terms?

Different strategies, different skills, different body types, different sports.

jeff.maynes asks,

In King Lear, Cordelia makes a remark that she can love her father the King more than her sisters as they have to divide their love between their father and husbands. We can take "love" here to mean "attention" but even if we don't, is there a sense in which she is right? That love can be a finite quantity?

The easy answer is no, love is not a material commodity so scarcity is not a concern. But the easy answer is wrong.

To love someone is not merely to have the warm fuzzies when you hear your beloved's name or think of your beloved's face. Love may not mean attention, but it is an active relation where you take that person's welfare, well-being, and personal development as one of your own concerns. To love is at least to care and as Nel Noddings points out, to care is an active relationship or at least a potentially active one. That is why saying "I love you" is so deeply meaningful, because it is more than "Boy, my heart thumps when I think of you," it entails a depth of relationship and commitment.

No one (with the possible exceptions of Bono and Oprah) can love everyone. At some point, your love becomes empty because you are unable to truly relate in the loving fashion to those to whom you profess love. The intuition that Cordelia is mistaken is legitimate because she is setting the limit of love absurdly low, but to say that there is no limit at all is also wrong.

That said, my dear readers, rest assured that I love you all, each and every one of you (especially you)...

Philosophical Problems, Dark Matter, and Impersonation

Three more today.

pm asks,

Are there any genuinely philosophical problems? If so, what are they?

Sure there are. The first two that come to mind is, "Are there any genuinely philosophical questions?" and "If so, what are they?" Others include meta-ethical concerns, questions about the interpretation of physical theories, the nature of justice and beauty, and unpacking presuppositions beneath all our beliefs. Also, what exactly is they pay me for? Still not sure about that one.

Philo asks,

What do you think dark matter will turn out to be?

The idea here is that with the exception of astronomical objects very close by, the only things we can see are those that glow and they tend to be big and heavy. But we know from the way the universe is behaving that there has to be a whole bunch of stuff out there, stuff we can't see, but know from its gravitational effects must be there. The question is what is it?

The answer of course, is heck if I know, but my guess is that it will end up either being very boring or very exciting. It will either simply be dust, light molecules floating around or something that we never envisioned that makes up most of the universe and forces us to radically revise our image of reality.

R.A. Porter asks,

Is there no way to do impersonations of politicians with "standard" midwest/newsreader American accents in an interesting and funny way? Or is it just that the writers and performers on SNL lack the creativity needed to make Obama, McCain, or Biden funny? Is a distinctive voice, accent, or speaking style necessary for a truly funny impersonation?

Impersonations have three parts: the voice, the body, and the script. Impersonations are living caricatures, you need to take mannerisms, phrasings, cadence, accent, something notable that identifies the person and blow it up or at least bring it out and model it well. If one is vanilla enough that there are not the things to focus upon, to make the viewer say to him/herself, "Oh my God, that is so him/her," then you've got to do it with the jokes.

That said, SNL is a different case. Good impressions of these folks could be done, but I think that if you look at the way young comics come up there is much less focus on impersonations. It's always been a specialty, but most comedians did some impression work. My sense is that this is not a skill that many young comedians now need to develop and so when you get an ensemble of young talent, you will have performers with a lot of talent, but less in the impression category.

Nursing and Private Colleges

Let's start of the week with our first two questions.

Annie asks,

Why is nursing excluded from health care media reportage, health policy decisions, and from all discussions and major decisions about health care?

The only time we hear about nursing is when there is a story about the nursing shortage. When larger elements of health care are reported on, it is true that the people who do the majority of the actual "in the trenches" work caring for those in need are not the voices we hear from. I think that part of the answer is surely that nurses tend to come from and remain in a lower socio-economic class than doctors and HMO executives, and they tend to be female. When you look at the distribution of social power, these are folks who tend not to have it and therefore are not paid much attention by those who construct the news. Their line would most likely be that they want to talk to those who make higher-level decisions and for that you talk to the players we usually hear from.

I think this is changing, though, at least to some degree. The nurses made a lot of noise in California recently when their union shadowed the Governor and had a major effect on the political discourse. Yes, they had to work harder just to have their voice heard, but maybe this will help them get a seat more readily henceforth.

Anon asks,

What will happen to over-priced educational institutions if the economy continues to tank? Let us suppose there was a small liberal arts college which charges an obscene amount of money per year, and lets call it, for the sake of argument "GC." Let us assume a serious decline in economic production, and not merely a painful slowdown. Let us also assume people cannot barrow the money to pay, say, 30k a year, because the banks do not trust people to pay them back, nor can they pay out of pocket because their portfolio just collapsed, too.

A great question. There is no doubt that the current economic downturn will have effects on education at liberal arts colleges in a number of ways. There is no doubt that less expensive public universities may end up being the choice of some who would otherwise prefer the smaller classes, more personalized attention, and greater focus on skills like writing that you get at liberal arts schools. The problems in the stock market affect college's bottom lines which depend on their endowments which rise and fall with the market. Less money means fewer and smaller scholarships and financial aid packages and that affects students and the school.

Add to that the demographic situation we now face with the end of the mini-baby boom, the backside of the larger number of college aged students who are the kids of the baby-boomers, and you are looking at a double whammy for tuition-driven schools. Things could get very tough for institutions like GC in the coming years.

At the same time, an important lens through which to understand social phenomena is class insecurity. College is not merely an institution for education, it is also seen -- especially by parents -- as a necessary step in making sure their kids remain in the middle or upper middle class. People today are very worried that the next generation won't have it as good as their parents and they look to higher ed as a stepping stone up or at least a bulwark to prevent socio-economic backsliding. As such, liberal arts schools do have a certain cache that makes them even more attractive in hard times, an investment (yes, a very pricey one) that may pay larger dividends in the end. The community at a smaller school, the personal relationship with professors instead of teaching assistants, the focus on breadth and interdisciplinarity, the way teaching and not research is put foremost in the values of the institution are what you pay the extra money for and the question then becomes whether the advantages conveyed are worth the extra loan burden.

Auto Mechanics to Quatum Mechanics: Any Questions?

Man, it's been a while since we've done this.

I have a schtick I do at the beginning of every class where I let my students ask me absolutely any question they have, any question at all, as I say, from auto mechanics to quantum mechanics. When I started up this blog years ago, some former students asked me to revive it on-line, so every once in a while I open it up.

So, if there's a question you've always wanted to ask or something that's just been stumping you, here's your chance. Ask away and I'll try to open up to discussion as many as possible in this week's posts.

Placebos and Autonomy

A new study finds that about half of American doctors prescribe placebos for their patients. In order for the placebo effect to work, the patient must believe that the prescribed treatment is generally effective, something the doctor knows to be false. Hence the doctor is misleading the patient, albeit for the patient's own good. This is a clear insult to patient autonomy; the doctor is not being a partner in health with the patient when seeing if the placebo effect -- a very real phenomenon which does lead to the patient's own body curing the ailment -- will work in the case, rather the doctor is putting him/herself in a paternalistic position.

The doctor is lying to the patient for the patient's own good, yet for the doctor/patient relationship to be successful surely requires a significant degree of trust, trust undermined by this approach. Placebos in research are one thing where the participant not only knows of the possibility, but knows that it is a necessary structural element. With one's own personal physician, though, one does have the expectation of both honesty and good faith attempts to improve your health. Is there something wrong with placebos in this case? Is it morally permissible for a doctor to put health promotion above honesty in a patient/doctor relationship? If the placebo doesn't work, would the patient be right in being angry or should s/he be glad that his/her doctor was pursuing every avenue of treatment?

Blogroll Additions

I have an open-link blogroll policy, that is, I'm happy to link to anyone who links here. I have a message in the sidebar asking anyone who has the Playground blogrolled to e-mail me to let me know, but I know that folks don't often read it and many are always a bit shy about contacting someone they don't know.

I'll be updating the kaiser/blogroll soon, eliminating dead links for blogs that no longer exist and redirecting to the ones that have been moved. I'd also like to make a call for folks who would like reciprocal links. So, if you don't see your blog listed and would like it to be, leave a comment with the address (and feel free to do a bit of shameless self-promotion telling us the sort of thing you usually write about). Also, if there's a wonderful blog that folks here at the Playground should be reading, please let me know.

M.B.A.'s and the Meltdown

A letter to Marketplace made an interesting point. This economic meltdown was the result of the actions of businesspeople at a time when more people have M.B.A.'s than at any time in history. The letter-writer was bemoaning the fact that the graduate education should have kept people from engaging in risky behavior and in unethical behavior, yet this did not happen.

I gave a paper a few years ago at a meeting of the Society of Business Ethics on Aristotle and the nature of corporate moral responsibility. The session before mine had a bunch of heavy-hitters in the world of business ethics and considered whether business ethics had a place in M.B.A. programs at all. They generally contended that their colleagues who study applied psychology and sociology considered their work too mushy to be taken seriously. The question was whether to accept this and work outside of the community or try to fight it in some way. Regardless of the answer, it seems to say that those with M.B.A.'s would be given a certain attitude towards ethical questions -- whether they are given coursework in it or not.

Is the education attached to the M.B.A. irrelevant to the goings on in the marketplace? Could it have been a contributing factor?

David Palmer and Barack Obama

With so much talk of the Bradley effect and the reverse Bradley effect lately, I began wondering about something that might be a common cause but could probably not be accounted for in quantitative analysis. The character of President David Palmer on the show 24, was a strong, smart, competent African American. Could the prominence of this character have created the archetype of an acceptable African American president in the minds of Americans worried about national security?

The Bradley effect, in which people tell pollsters that they support a minority candidate, but do not vote for him/her, is based upon racial beliefs and those beliefs are affected by what we think is normal. Our perceptions of normality are shaped by what we see, even -- perhaps especially -- fiction. We know that 24 has shaped the national debate on the morality of torture, for example, being cited even by a Supreme Court justice. Could it also be affecting the larger cultural mind about what is acceptable in terms of race?

If so, the idea that a pro-torture, neo-conservative, fear-mongering drama on Fox setting the table for a Democratic President would have to go in the "irony can be so ironic" file.

Stress and Health

I was listening to an interview with Stanford neurologist Robert Sapolsky on NPR a few weeks back and it really struck me. Sapolsky who studies the relation between the neurological and the social in primates told a fascinating story in discussing his latest book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.

He pointed to the well-known relation between wealth and health. The usual explanation, that more money means more access to health care and higher quality health care, he argued, is belied by the fact that we see the same thing in European countries with socialized health care systems. Everyone has the same access to the same health care, yet it still holds true that the better off financially, the better off physically. Why?

He contends that the answer is class-related stress; the lower you are on the pecking order, the more stressful your life, and the more stressful your life, the worse your health. He used an anecdote to illustrate the point. He discussed a group of mountain gorillas that lived close to a human settlement. Gorillas have a strict social hierarchy based on and maintained by physical aggression. As a result, he contends, great stress and stress related health problems that are more frequent among those lower on the social ladder. Through interaction with humans, the more aggressive males had all been killed in interactions with humans, leaving the troop with only females and less aggressive males. The result, he contended was a new culture in the troop which was more egalitarian and gentle. Newcomers were socialized into this structure and as a result fewer health problems were found among this group than in troops of comparable size that have the usual hierarchical structure.

Is this a fair argument? Of course, there are many, many other factors at play, but can we point to the artificial stress of contemporary life as one of the more significant threats to public health or is it overstated?

Palin, Sex, and Women

A couple of thoughts on Sarah Palin now that several weeks have past.

The first comes from a piece by Tom Perrotta in Slate called "The Sexy Puritan" in which he discusses an archetype of political talking head, the sexy puritan of which Palin is only the latest instance. He reaches back to Anita Bryant, and points to contemporary versions like Britney Spears, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and Monica Goodling. Of course, to be added to the list are Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin.

The move is interestingly discussed by the General:

To what extent is the anti-sex party selling their anti-sex policies by using sexy women like Sarah Palin to deliver the sex-is-bad medicine with a wink and a nod?...

Sex is being separated from Sexiness, which shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Being sexy isn't an invitation to sex and sex can be enjoyed without conforming to society's standards of sexiness. This separation isn't being done, though, to free people from impossible standards of sexiness but is rather exploiting and reinforcing those standards for ideological goals. This separation isn't being done to protect women's choices about sex, but rather to limit their choices even further.

The question before us, then, is how to properly challenge this without on the one hand reinforcing the tactic in ways that might make the anti-sex brigades' job easier or, on the other hand reinforcing some of society's notions about sex and sexiness which should be reformed anyway.

To what extent is sexual repression being played upon? To what extent is the unhealthy attitude we as a culture we have towards human sexuality being manipulated for political means that only reinforce that unhealthiness?

Secondly, is this connected with Palin's lack of popularity with women? From Time:

Overall, Palin is viewed favorably by 47% of likely voters and unfavorably by 40%. But her numbers are worse among women than men: 45% of all women surveyed have a negative opinion of Palin, compared to 42% who view her positively. Fifty-two percent of men have a favorable opinion, while 35% are in the unfavorable camp.

Clearly, the McCain folks had hoped that in light of Clinton's loss in the Democratic primary, that putting a woman on the ticket would draw women in, yet it seems to be driving them away. Why?

Some argue that trying to substitute a novice like Palin for a seasoned political veteran and obviously extremely intelligent candidate like Clinton is an insult to women by taking them to put identity politics above substantive issues. Others point to her displayed lack of coherence and intellectual curiosity during interviews...the few she has been allowed to do.

I don't want to argue that both of these are not truly contributing factors, certainly they are, but I also wonder if there is something else that is often operative, something that comes from the gut, not the brain. It comes from combining the "sexy puritan" schtick with the viciousness of the attacks from Governor Palin during her speeches. As I told a class a few weeks back, despite what we wish, high school never ends. Put sexy and nasty together and it takes many folks back to high school where everyone knew that in-crowd, the Heathers, the cool kids who would were in the top clique and always made sure that the rest of us knew we weren't one of them. My hypothesis is that one of the reason that women are less positive on Governor Palin than men is that there is an emotional association that women have that men do not.

Thoughts?

Comedy and the Turing Test

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists everywhere,

This week, good brother 71 sent me a link to this article, "Computers Crack Jokes in Unusual Artificial Intelligence Test."

Alan Turing used as a sufficient condition for artificial intelligence a test wherein if a human could not tell he or she was conversing with a machine, then that machine would have to be considered to be thinking. A competition is held in Reading, England based on this idea and human judges carry on two IM type conversations at the same time with one of the conversants being human and one being computer-generated. The judges are then asked to determine which is which and the program that fools the most judges wins. Some of the computers used jokes to disguise themselves as human:

Cleverbot, designed by Rollo Carpenter, used humor to try to fool the judges.

Roberts said Elbot worked by catching some of the judges off-guard with provocative answers or impishly hinting that it was, in fact, a machine.

"Hi. How's it going?" one judge began.

"I feel terrible today," Elbot replied. "This morning I made a mistake and poured milk over my breakfast instead of oil, and it rusted before I could eat it."

So, what would happen if you could program a computer to generate great material and have perfect timing. Suppose that these were not jokes programed in by the programmer, but rather a complex program that could, say, make puns that the programmer never thought of. The machine would be funny, but, in line with the Turing Test, could it be said to have a sense of humor?

I will leave you with a computer joke:

A doctor, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The doctor remarked "Well, in the Bible it says that God created Eve from a rib taken from Adam. This clearly required surgery so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world."

The civil engineer interrupted and said "But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong; mine is the oldest profession in the world."

The computer scientist leaned back in his chair, smiled, and said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?

Your favorite computer joke?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

??????

Captions anyone for this photo from Reuters?

What Can be Taught?

Strange that we don't ask this question before we begin to teach, but what is it that can be taught?

Skills can be taught. That seems uncontroversial. But what else?

As a teacher of critical thinking, can people be taught to be rational? As an ethics teacher, can people be taught to be good? to be empathetic? to be caring? Can you be taught to find great art beautiful? Can you teach someone to be creative? You could teach them new techniques to channel their creativity by, say, teaching them the form of a sonnet, but can you teach someone to be more creative than they were before the lessons? You can teach someone to play an instrument, but can you teach them to play with with feeling or soul?

What can and cannot be taught?

Bullshit or Not: Nietzsche Edition

There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, "In Search Of..." called, "Bullshit or Not?" with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that I've stolen it for an irregular series of posts.

Since today is Friedrich Nietzsche's birthday, let's play with a passage from The Twilight of the Idols:

My demand upon the philosopher is known, that he take his stand beyond good and evil and leave the illusion of moral judgment beneath himself. This demand follows from an insight which I was the first to formulate: that there are altogether no moral facts. Moral judgments agree with religious ones in believing in realities which are no realities. Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena.

So, are there moral facts? Bullshit or not, you decide. As usual, feel free to leave anything from a single word to a dissertation.

Electing God

So, apparently it is not just an election to determine who gets to be President, it's an election to determine who gets to be God:

Unhelpful for establishing the tone McCain sought in Davenport was the Rev. Arnold Conrad, past pastor of the Grace Evangelical Free Church. His prayer before McCain arrived at the convention center blocks from the Mississippi River appeared to dismiss faiths other than Christianity and cast the election as a referendum on God himself.

"I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons," Conrad said.

"And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day," he said.

Lest you be worried, my flock, just remember Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live...game, set, match, Comedists.

Are Atoms Real?

I gave a talk to a group of parents last Friday and asked whether we should believe atoms are real. The group overwhelmingly thought it was a silly question until one parent, clearly a scientist, piped up and informed everyone that atoms are not directly observed, but merely a part of our best current model.

Models, I mentioned, are not true or false, but better or worse. A model airplane may be good if it looks like an airplane, but it may not be as good as another model that bears a stronger resemblance. Scientists use models all the time, indeed many contemporary philosophers of science see scientific theories as sets of models. A theory is successful if the actual system in the world bears a significantly strong resemblance relationship to the posited model, where the resemblance is strong if it allows us to make a wide enough array of successful predictions that it suits our needs.

Of course, every theory will eventually be replaced with a better theory. What does this mean for the way we understand the relationship between theories and the world?
Realists contend that we have good reason to think that we should understand our scientific theories literally, that is, we have good reason to believe that the world actually looks the way described by our best theories. Instrumentalists hold theories to merely be useful tools in providing images by which we can work with systems and produce further results, but one should not confuse a successful tool with a description of some underlying reality.

So, should we believe that atoms are real and if so, why?

Making Fun Of vs. Joking Reference

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This weekend we consider another moral question in comedy. There is no doubt that humor can be used as a weapon. Indeed, our own Comedist security squad, the Fast Action Response Team whose motto is "If we don't kill, give 'em the gas", is among the most elite purveyors of the comic martial arts in the world. But the weapon can be used for ill as well as for good and we want to be clear on where that line is.

This issue has been rolling around in my mind for the last few weeks since TheWife thought a joke I had been trying to work into my routine crossed the line. It's a visual thing, but I'll try to explain it. At the start of a routine I've been working on lately around the fake rubber testicles hanging off of the trailer hitches of pickup trucks, I make the reference with an accompanying hand gesture using two cupped hands. I then pause and say, "For those of you who do not know sign language...testicles." I then remove one hand and say, "the sign for Lance Armstrong." She argued, convincingly, that it was making fun of a cancer victim and that is out of bounds.

But, the fact is that I wasn't making fun of Lance Armstrong or his cancer. At the same time Lance Armstrong and the result of his cancer are an essential, ineliminable element of the joke. There seems to be a difference here between jokes about and jokes that attack, that is jokes that make the referent the butt of the joke and those of which one is merely the subject.

This sort of thing pops up often. Every weekend I begin these homilies with a welcome to all brothers, sisters, and transgendered comedists and it is an authentic welcome. I want all to come here and feel the funny, especially transgendered members of the Comedist community who have such a rough time in the rest of society. The opening is also designed to give a laugh, not at transgendered individuals, but at the unexpected challenging of preconceptions. The essence of the joke is in setting up the listener to have one interpretation of a situation and then forcing an incompatible interpretation on them with the punch line, forcing their minds to try to reconcile the irreconcilable. The resulting short-circuit results in cerebral overload and thus laughter. In this case, it is standard religious fare to refer to brothers and sisters, presupposing that the two sexes exhaust the genders, but when you add in transgendered, you trip up that false presupposition. Thus the transgendered members of our community are not being made fun of, but are an essential element of the joke.

The question is tricky when the group referred to, like the transgendered, is oppressed. Even if the reference is not degrading, does the mere act of drawing attention to them, of singling them out with the joke, make even a mention with no malice whatsoever morally problematic?

A good friend admitted that he was made uncomfortable at my bit on Eskimo kissing because of the references to Eskimo women who are very much oppressed in northern culture (I'd say they are at the bottom of the totem pole, but that reference is itself in question).

Similarly, Melissa at Shakespeare's Sister takes umbrage at the use of the term "Caribou Barbie" to refer to Sarah Palin. The line is clearly a play on Malibu Barbie and the term Barbie is often used as an insulting term for women who use their looks, but come off as unintelligent and plastic. The converse "Ken Doll" is used to describe blow-dried, unintelligent plastic men (John Roberts of CNN was referred to in that way just today by a blog by a liberal economist that I can't seem to find; thought it was Brad Delong, but cannot find the post). Is there a difference in the two references because of the social context? Does the oppression of women break the comic symmetry?

As you consider that, here's another Lance Armstrong joke I wrote (only this one must be clear because it refers to his virility):

You know Lance Armstrong's girlfriend won't let him use yellow condoms because then he tries to finish first.

Live, laugh, and love,

Irreverend Steve