Is There a Moral Difference Between the Needs of Victims in Japan and Haiti?

Looking at the Red Cross signs for donations to help the victims of the earthquake/tsunami/potential nuclear meltdown in Japan, raises questions about the moral imperative to help. When the earthquake struck Haiti, there were horrible conditions as well. But a major difference was that it was in one of the world's poorest countries with a barely functioning government who had little in the way of resources or expertise to deal with the problems of the suffering population. In Japan, on the other hand, you have one of the world's wealthiest countries with a track record of dealing very expeditiously with disasters in a way that stands as a model to the rest of the world. This is meant in no way to downplay the very real suffering of the Japanese people, but only to draw a contrast between the contexts.

Does that context come with moral import in that if the aid is not absolutely necessary, do you still have a responsibility/the same responsibility to help? Does human suffering itself generate the need to act to help alleviate it? Is our individual obligation altered at all by considerations of the means, resources, and expertise of the sufferer or does the suffering itself trigger our obligation to help?

How Soon Is Too Soon?

My Fellow Comedists,

This week, good brother YKW sent me a link to Gilbert Godfried's Twitter feed full of Japan earthquake/tsunami jokes.

What does Japanese Jews like to eat? Hebrew National Tsunami.

What does every Japanese person have in their apartment? Flood lights.

YKW's question was "too soon?"

On the one hand, jokes make light of a situation. Being the subject of a joke makes one often feel like you are being laughed at. In a situation in which empathy is appropriate, joking seems uncaring.

On the other hand, Gilbert Gottfried is one of the last of an old breed, joke writers. Contemporary comics tend to be more narrative, allowing their delivery to get the laughs. But Gilbert Gottfried writes jokes in the classic style. There is a technique to writing a joke, you need to find an unbalanced ambiguity, create a set-up that uses the stronger interpretation of the ambiguity and then twist it for a tightly worded punchline. For someone as experienced in the craft as Gilbert Gottfried, any event provides material and it is a simple technical exercise to write a joke about it, it has nothing to do with a lack of empathy any more than finding rhymes for "tsunami" does.

So, too soon? If you think so, please express it in a civil manner...don't have a meltdown.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Locating Citations

Why do we include location when we cite a source? Maybe it made sense in the 18th century when there might have been a Jones & Son publishing books in London and another, different Jones & Son publishing in Surrey, but nowadays when there are so few publishers and all of them outsource the printing anyway, why do we cite location at all? Is this a tradition we can get rid of or does it actually serve some purpose?

The Meaning of St. Patrick's Day

The Harrisburg Patriot-News is running my op/ed today:

With parades and parties, we take St. Patrick’s Day more lightly than other holidays. We treat it more as a celebration than a moment for solemn reflection. This is a wonderful thing, not only for the joy it brings, but because there is hope in the fact that we allow the deeper meaning of the day to pass unnoticed.

Our youngest national holiday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, during which we not only commemorate the life of a peaceful leader who stood for justice and morality, but take time to contemplate the ways in which our culture and social structures still embody unfairness toward groups of Americans.

Though we seldom stop to think of it, St. Patrick’s Day stands for all that we wish for eight weeks earlier on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. The mass Irish migration to America occurred in the first half of the 19th century and was met with fear, hatred and bigotry.

Overt job discrimination was rampant as every Irish worker knew of the “No Irish Need Apply” signs and the same sort of vitriolic rhetoric was voiced toward them as we see now against Spanish-speaking immigrants. The Know Nothing Party was organized specifically to undermine the political power of Irish Catholics. Kids today have no sense whatsoever how momentous it was in 1960 to have John F. Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, elected president of the United States.

But the fact that anti-Irish discrimination is no longer a part of our collective consciousness is precisely what makes St. Patrick’s Day so wonderful. We do not use St. Patrick’s Day to celebrate Irish-American liberation and equality, we just use it to celebrate Irish culture.

Irish-Americans are now considered as American as anyone else, but this is not the result of complete assimilation. Irish-Americans were not made to surrender their identities. A decade and a half after Frank McCourt won the Pulitzer Prize for “Angela’s Ashes” and “Riverdance” sold out show after show, we see the Irish as contributing positively to the larger culture and on St. Patrick’s Day everyone partakes in the celebration of that contribution.

St. Patrick’s Day stands as a monument to cosmopolitanism, to the view that we are strongest not when we are homogenized, when our differences are stripped away in favor of a single way of being, but rather when we embrace differences and seek to understand how other ways of experiencing the world can be used to augment, to enrich our own limited perspective.

Ferdinand Tonnies, a founding father of sociology, argued that there is a difference between communities — groups bound together by what they have in common — and societies — which are created of distinct groups. It is human nature, he claimed, that communities would create societies, that no matter how similar the members of the group, we inevitably find ways to divide ourselves up, of creating us versus them situations.

As human beings, we naturally try to exclude, shut out and minimize others. St. Patrick’s Day gives us hope that it can be different. That we can not only peaceably coexist, but that we can cherish and benefit from our diversity.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is an important holiday because it forces us to focus on the places in our cultures where we erect boundaries, hurdles and brick walls to keep those who are different from fully realizing themselves as citizens and complete human beings in our society.

There remain major impediments to the full equality of many Americans. But while the heaviness of such a task should make us pause, the levity of St. Patrick’s Day should urge us forward, providing us with a success story that it can be done.

We can bring people into the family without forcing them to give up what makes them special. This sort of inclusion enriches us all. When it is said that on St. Patrick’s Day “everyone has a little Irish in them,” it acknowledges the ways in which we are a better culture for having added another set of experiences.

This is why, despite the fact that I am not Irish, I celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as one of the great American holidays and lift a glass of Guinness to toast the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in hope that someday we will have created a society so moral, fair and mindful that his birthday, too, can be celebrated in the same way.

My Lai and the Nature of War

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the massacre at My Lai in which U.S. troops brutally beat, tortured, raped, and slaughtered several hundred unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, in a South Vietnamese village.

Having taught at a military academy, one of the words you hear thrown around often is "honor." It is certainly part of the mythology of the warrior that they try to build. But is it possible to create someone who can do the job one asks of the warrior and not have them become like Heracles, blinded to the consequences of your actions when you are in the middle of them? Are horrors like My Lai inevitable when war is a reality? We hear terms like "bad eggs" applied to folks at Abu Ghraib, but is it the eggs that have gone bad or does the environment spoil them? Certainly, it is true that different people react differently to the same stimulus, and that not everyone will be changed in the same way by war or any other experience; but there are sociological regularities, there are trends. If you have a war, will it not affect a significant enough number such that My Lai-type incidents are a near certainty?

Is it something that strong leadership or better training can change or is such despicable evil a nearly necessary result of war itself?

Et Tu, Brute...They're Small

Beware the ides of March...

So, was Brutus right to participate in the assassination of Caesar? Was it for the greater good or was it an act of betrayal, or both? If Caesar was trying to usurp power that was not his to take, would that have freed Brutus from the bonds of friendship and loyalty? Would it have forced him from the relationship making questions of betrayal irrelevant? When someone is your friend, does it matter, for the sake of the relationship, what they do to others?

Why Do We Love Einstein?

Today is Einstein's birthday and as I put the finishing touches on the manuscript, Einstein's Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion, I am thinking about the question in the last chapter -- why do we love Einstein?

On the one hand, it must have something to do with the theory of relativity. Even if most of us have no idea what it really says, the idea that someone smart has told us that reality is like an M.C. Escher print is appealing in a number of ways. On the other hand, it is the man -- or at least the icon we have made out of the man -- that we love. The hair, the lack of socks and belts, Einstein represents non-conformism. Everything that we are told we have to do by the society, but on some level we know is just so much fluff, Einstein is the epitome of the person who sees BS and calls it what it is.

Or maybe it is the combination of the two: he represents in the cultural mind the idea that rejecting mindless formality can lead to progress. Think of the Einstein quotations we see on bumper stickers: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” “The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.” “Great thinkers have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Einstein is our image of the open mind and the open mind both comes to see reality more clearly in all its bizarre beauty and it sees through that which is pointless socially-enforced silliness masquerading as moral, intellectual, or cultural necessity.

Of all the smart people who have ever lived, why is it Einstein we love like Einstein?

The Origin of the Celebration of Lent

Mt Fellow Comedists,

I've been doing a lot of research into the history of religion lately as I wind up writing Einstein's Jewish Science, and this is inspired by a comment from good brother Hanno and is almost true:

Setting: meeting room in the Vatican, a good long while ago.

Pope: Thank you, Monsignor, for a very thorough report, you've given us a lot to think about and I think that you are correct that shame is certainly one important element in increasing contributions. Next on the agenda is Cardinal Roberto, to whom I have given a very special assignment. As you will remember, I am concerned that we are not sufficiently reverent during the Lenten period and I have asked the good Cardinal to research the question and propose a new ritual for the period leading up to the Holy Days of Easter. Cardinal?

Roberto: Thank you, your Eminence. I was fortunate enough to be given this assignment by His Holiness, a task that I have given great effort and consideration. As the Father has said, it would be a good idea to prepare the faithful for the holiest days of the calendar with a period of reflection and sacrifice. As Jesus, our Lord was tested in the days before He ascended, so too should we be tested.

I began by studying the rituals of our brethren Abrahamic traditions. On Yom Kippur, the holiest day for Jews, they mark the time by fasting from sundown to sundown. The Muslims, for their holy period of Ramadan, for 30 days they fast from sunrise to sundown. So, I propose that we show them who is the most observant, the most committed. For the FORTY days of Lent, we shall fast, not letting any food pass our lips from sunrise to sundown. During the Lenten period, the hunger we shall feel we will satisfy not with the food of this Earth, but with the sustenance of the Spirit. And so, henceforth, we shall fast the forty days of Lent.

Pope: Wonderful work, Cardinal. Thoughtful, insightful, decisive. I LOVE it. But...what's say we tweak it...just a bit, nothing much. What's say we...I don't know...instead of EVERYDAY for forty days, let's say we just do it, you know, once a week. Fridays. That's it. We'll do it on Fridays.

Roberto: Yes, your Holiness. During the forty days of the Lenten period, on Fridays, we shall abstain from eating. Just as Jesus suffered painfully with the crown of thorns, so we too will partake in his pain by eating nothing from sun up to sun down each Friday during Lent. We will feel the pain within the core of our being so that he may fill the void. Once a week, absolutely no food whatsoever shall we ingest in reverence to his sacrifice for us.

Pope: Well...you know...I really love this idea, Cardinal, really, really do. Fabulous, absolutely fabulous...but NO food at all? Seems a little extreme don't you think? How about if we don't give up ALL food, just certain foods. Let's say...meat. On Fridays during Lent, we'll give up meat.

Roberto: (sigh) I completely concur, Eminence. Just as Jesus, on that holiest of days, did leave behind his flesh so that He may cleanse us of the sinful ways of our flesh, on the Fridays during Lent, we too will surrender flesh from our diets. During this holy period, we shall be like our Lord and Savior by eschewing all eating of any animal of the earth, sky, or sea. We will sacrifice in this SMALL way just as He did sacrifice for us.

Pope: Cardinal, let me tell you how great I think this is. This is magnificent work on your part, really is. Just...I don't know...ALL meat? The miracle of the fish was one of Jesus' biggies, right? And even the Lord himself would have gone for the Ciopinno that they serve down at Guiseppe's every Friday. Am I right about that, guys?

All: Hurumph, harumph, harumph...

Cardinal Giovanni: Give the Pontiff, harumph!

Cardinal Frederico: Harumph!

Pope: Why don't we just touch it up a little. We'll limit ourselves to seafood on Fridays during Lent! There it is. Done.

Roberto: (rolling eyes) Yes, father, during the holy period of Lent, we shall share in the suffering of Jesus Christ our Lord, experiencing for ourselves the pain of having his body crucified, by eating only shrimp cocktail, crab dip with artichoke, grilled calamari with olives, baked anchovies with a light lemon/oil glaze, and polenta with a clam sauce.

Pope: Don't forget pecan encrusted Salmon over fetuccini...with a nice alfredo sauce, I love that. Now's there's a celebration fit for our Lord. thank you, Cardinal.

A happy and reverent holy season to all of our Christian brethren.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Disaster Preparedness and Godzilla Movies

As I was driving in this morning, listening to an NPR reporter in Japan report on the earthquake, she said something that caught my ear. She said that if any country could be prepared for something like this it would be Japan because they spend far more money on disaster preparedness than any other nation in the world.

Of course, this immediately made me think of similar claims that are made about the U.S., except that when someone says the U.S. spends hundreds of times more on it per capita than any other nation in the world, the it they are always referring to is national defense. The Japanese spend their money protecting their people from natural disaster, whereas we spend ours on weapons to be used, by in large, overseas.

Why the difference? Japan, of course, has a pacifist constitution after WWII, but even if this wasn't the case, they would probably be on par with European nations or South Korea in terms of military spending. We, on the other hand, may not have the earthquake concern to the degree that they do -- although the west coast certainly has worries -- but we have all sorts of other natural disaster issues that we treat much less seriously (can anyone say Katrina?). from the Reagan era, FEMA was seen as nothing but a political plum, a do nothing, unimportant job to give friends for political patronage. Clinton reformed the agency under James Lee Whitt, but it obviously fell back to its old ways under Bush II.

Then I thought of 1950s and 60s adventure movies from the US and Japan. Our bad guys, the fears that most spoke to our psyches, were Indians needing to be run off by cowboys and villians, super criminals needing to be stopped by super heroes. Theirs were Godzilla and Mothra -- major threats derived from nature run amok. We need guns and powers to protect us from people and peoples who are threats to the American way. But they needed to protect themselves from natural rivals.

the claim is not that pop culture drives spending at the federal level, but rather that priorities are driven by fears which can be seen in various forms in places one might not expect. It also means that changing the collective sense of threat from one thing to another -- say, through popular culture -- could have long-term policy implications.

If that is true, who are the new movie bad guys we ought to see on the screen? More John Grisham type films in which corporate types bring about dangerous situations for the rest of us to enrich themselves? Who else should be seen as fictional threats in cartoon form?

Disgusting Colors?

The word disgusting comes from the notion of inedible. That which is disgusting turns our stomachs. While certain complex, contextual phenomena are disgusting, there are simple experiences that are disgusting in and of themselves. Certain smells or tastes, for example, are just implicitly disgusting. But is this true of other types of basic experiences? Are there certain colors or shades of color that are disgusting? Are there textures that are disgusting apart from what they are a part of?

Something Borrowed, Something Lent

Ash Wednesday is a good time to think about cultural practices that we engage in without thinking. If we as a society decided to give up something for Lent, what would be a good thing on which to declare a 40-day moratorium? What would we as a culture be better off giving up for 40 days?

Laissez les Bon Temps Roulet

Happy Fat Tuesday everyone. This is the one and only honest holiday we have. Longtime Playground regulars will recall my holiday theory -- "holiday" comes from "holy day" and we use our holidays to pretend that we are honoring that which is sacred, virtuous. But really, in the way we go about the festivities of our holidays, what we are actually honoring is vice, sin. This may not be a bad thing as it provides us with social safety valves, ways and places to blow off steam and have our fun that do not hurt anyone.

That said, does building in a place for engaging in behaviors we otherwise frown upon allow catharsis, for us to get it out of our system, or does it show a tacit approval and allow it to embed itself in the cultural character?

Leave comments and beads below...

Fairness and Justice in Grading

I have a policy on quizzes wherein if I make a mistake in grading that is in the student's favor and the student points it out, I do not take off the points that should have been deducted. On the one hand, this policy is not fair in that other students who made the same error, but were graded properly have lost points for something that this student did not. Both made the same error, but only one lost points. On the other hand, it seems to me that it is just in that it does not punish those who are honest. If two students both have misgraded quizzes and one points it out to me and one does not, it seems wrong to deduct points only the one who did the right thing.

Is there a problem with this policy? Should fairness or justice be the guiding principle here?

Laughter is the Best Medicine

My Fellow Comedists,

The short people, also known as incubators with feet, have passed on a nasty bug (serves me right for teaching them to share). So, as I'm feeling lousy, it's your turn. Say something funny for me.

Live, love, and feel better,

Irreverend Steve

The Ontology of Accents

Last night at dinner with the department, a colleague, whose native language is not English, declared that he has an accent. Someone else said that he didn't because there was no discernible difference between the way he pronounced words and the way everyone else at the table did. He insisted that this was irrelevant and that he did, in fact, have a different accent than the rest of us because of his native language.

His claim was that an accent is a property. It is something a person has or does not have, or that everyone has an may be classified according to original dialect. The objection is that an accent is really a relation, a non-identity relation in which one's pronunciation is determined to be distinct from others, that is, you can only be said to have an accent relative to some other set of pronunciations taken as the local benchmark from which yours differs.

So, is "having an accent" a property or a relation? Can you have an accent and the people around you not notice or is the accent exactly the noticing of the difference?

What's the Difference?: Potter Stewart Edition

What's the difference between Potter Stewart and Clarence Thomas? Stewart knows obscenity when he sees it, but Thomas suspends judgment until at least the third time he's rented it.

So, what's the difference between crude, vulgar, and obscene?

The Traditional Definition of Marriage

With the Obama administration backing away from DOMA, it makes me wonder why we allow the right to get away with the false claim that "the traditional definition of marriage is one man and one woman" as if this has been what the institution has meant from time immemorial and they can thereby make some supposedly non-fallacious appeal to tradition in "defense" of it. The fact is, the traditional definition of marriage is when a man whose property includes a female child, decides to unload this burden by bribing some other guy to take this piece of property off his hands. The traditional definition of marriage is a contract where women are treated as mere property to be exchanged from one man's ownership to another. And like other pieces of property, there's no reason why a man should be limited in how many he owns. Polygamy is perfectly well a part of the traditional notion of marriage. So, the fact is that we've redefined marriage several times already. If that's the case, then clearly we consider the notion plastic enough to be capable of occasional updates for moral purposes. If that's the case, why not one more?

Is There Something Intrinsically Good About Fair Play?

I told the shorter of the short people yesterday that he should not cheat at solitaire. He responded, "Why not?" To which I said, "Ummmm..."

Clearly, "cheating" in this case indicates breaking the rules and not swindling another player. By breaking the rules, he is, in fact, just playing a different, albeit easier, solitaire game of his choosing. But there does seem to be something wrong. Is it a virtue type thing, that the cheating is embedding a proclivity towards dishonesty, or at least taking the easy way out, in his character?

So, is there anything wrong with cheating at solitaire?

RIP Kenneth Mars

My Fellow Comedists,

Last week I wrote about Ernest Marsden, a scientist who pulled yeoman's duty and contributed to one of the most important scientific discoveries without receiving the credit. Last week, we lost a comedic version. Kenneth Mars passed away from pancreatic cancer. A comic actor of great range -- Mel Brooks had him as a Nazi and Woody Allen made him a rabbi. He worked for decades in supporting roles, but always wonderfully funny, whether it was the snobby competitor in What's Up, Doc or in his most famous role as Franz Leibkind in The Producers. My favorite Kenneth Mars scene, however, comes from a slightly later Mel Brooks film:

RIP Kenneth Mars and thanks for all the laughs.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

By and Large

A fascinating etymology from The Phrase Finder:

Many phrases are wrongly ascribed a nautical origin just because they sound like mariner's lingo. This one really is and, like many such nautical phrases, it originated in the days of sail.

To get a sense of the original meaning of the phrase we need to understand the nautical terms 'by' and 'large'. 'Large' is easier, so we'll start there. When the wind is blowing from some compass point behind a ship's direction of travel then it is said to be 'large'. Sailors have used this term for centuries. For example, this piece from Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1591:

"When the wind came larger we waied anchor and set saile."

When the wind is in that favourable large direction the largest square sails may be set and the ship is able to travel in whatever downwind direction the captain sees fit.

'By' is a rather more difficult concept for landlubbers like me. In simplified terms it means 'in the general direction of'. Sailors would say to be 'by the wind' is to face into the wind or within six compass points of it.

The earliest known reference to 'by and large' in print is from Samuel Sturmy, in The Mariners Magazine, 1669:

"Thus you see the ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and learge."

by and largeTo sail 'by and large' required the ability to sail not only as earlier square-rigged ships could do, i.e. downwind, but also against the wind. At first sight, and for many non-sailors I'm sure second and third sight too, it seems impossible that a sailing ship could progress against the wind. They can though. The physics behind this is better left to others. Suffice it to say that it involves the use of triangular sails which act like aeroplane wings and provide a force which drags the ship sideways against the wind. By the use of this and by careful angling of the rudder the ship can make progress towards the wind.

The 19th century windjammers like Cutty Sark were able to maintain progress 'by and large' even in bad wind conditions by the use of many such aerodynamic triangular sails and large crews of able seamen.

And a Half

Today is the shorter of the short people's half birthday, he can officially claim to be 8 and 1/2. When and why do we stop using the "and a half" when discussing our age?

Is Variety the Spice of Life?

Is there an inherent worth to variety? Is it a response to the modern notion of boredom that doesn't come about until industrialization gives us leisure and people trying to sell us things to do with our leisure time? The word "bored" doesn't appear in the English language until 1823 and "boredom" until 1853 (The OED has Dickens' Bleak House as containing the inaugural use of the term). Is variety intrinsically valuable or is it something that enterprising capitalists are trying to get us to believe in order to induce false needs to buy more and different? Or is there a truly human reason why we love -- and should love -- novelty? Is novelty a condition for growth, innovation, and progress? By experiencing a range of things, does it make us broader minded across the board? Should we seek variety to round out our character? Is variety the spice of life, or would that be cinnamon?

God's Infinite Properties

A student and playground regular is working on a senior thesis with me about natural language uses of utterances referring to the infinite. He's got an interesting puzzle that I figured I'd throw out there for everyone to play with.

There are two types of transfinite numbers -- cardinals and ordinals. A cardinal number is an amount. I have five bananas. An ordinal number is the rank of something. Stan Musial's jersey was not saying he had 6 of anything, but that if you lined up everyone in order according to what was on the back of the jersey, he would be 6th in line. Of course, that would mean he played for the St. Louis Ordinals, not the St. Louis Cardinals.

If we consider the three classic properties attributed to God -- omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence -- which notion of the infinite is implicit in each?

With omniscience, the idea of being all-knowing implies that God knows every fact, that we could take all of the facts, number them, come up with an infinite number and attribute knowledge of all of them to God. It appears to be a cardinality claim.

With omnipotence, on the other hand, it is not saying that God could do everything on an infinitely long list of actions, but rather that being all powerful means that no matter how powerful you are, God is always more powerful than that. God in front of you in the power line-up. It seems to be an ordinal notion.

But what about omnibenevolence? What does it mean to be all good or all loving? Is it that if you listed out everything, God would love everything on the list? Or if you listed every possible action, God would always do the right one? Or is it that no matter how much you love a thing, God always loves everything more? there doesn't seem to be a quantity of anything to count, but there also doesn't seem to be a scale here to make God the holder of the ultimate degree. What does it mean to say that God is infinitely good or all loving?

Most Important Presidential Actions

On President's Day, let's consider what Presidents have and have not done. What were the most historically important actions or words, both positive and negative, that have come from American Presidents?

I'd put Washington's stepping down after two terms as the most formative action by a President. The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln as the most morally necessary act by a President. And Eisenhower's Farewell Address as the most insightful speech by a President.

Others?

Passing the Plate: A Man Walks into a Bar Again

My Fellow Comedists:

In many houses of worship, they pass a collection plate. Comedists donate jokes of value. Let's go back to the classic theme, "A man walks into a bar..."

Dig deep, give your best.

My contributions:

I believe this one was first told to me by "YKW":

A sandwich walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender looks up and says, "I'm sorry, we don't serve food here."

And my all-time favorite:

A man walks into the bar of the penthouse restaurant of the Hilton in Times Square. A drunk walks over puts $100 on the bar and bets him the he could jump out the window and fly around the building.

The guy says, "You're drunk."

The drunk says, "I may be, but I'm going to do it whether you take the bet or not, so you might as well make the money, right?"

So, he puts $100 on the bar, the drunk opens the window, flies around the building, picks up the $200 and puts it in his pocket."

Incredulously, the guy asks, "How did you do that?"

"Easy," says the drunk, "I'm an architectural engineer and if you look at the height and location of this building with two larger buildings to the east and west, it creates a wind tunnel effect that supports up to 300 pounds or so. You just lean your body and the air currents take you around. Now you go do it to that guy."

"I don't know," says the guy.

"Look," the drunk tells him, "if you don't I will, and you're down $100."

So the guy walks over, makes the bet, opens the window and plummets to his death.

The bartender looks up and says, "You're a real bastard when you're drunk, Superman."

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

In Praise of Ernest Marsden

Tomorrow would be the 122nd anniversary of the birth of Ernest Marsden, the man who discovered the nucleus for the man who discovered the nucleus. As an undergraduate at the University of Manchester studying physics, Marsden became a laboratory assistant for Ernest Rutherford, who like Marsden hailed from New Zealand, but had found his way into the scientific circles of early 20th century England. Rutherford was loud, brash, and, compared to his contemporaries at Cambridge, shockingly uncouth. But that is what endeared him to J.J. Thompson, discoverer of the electron and the most powerful scientist in the country.

Having discovered the electron, tiny particles of negativity in the atom, Thompson had proposed the "plum pudding model" in which these electrons swam in a soup of positivity making an electrically neutral atom. Rutherford, along with his assistant Hans Geiger, was testing whether such a model fit observation. So they devised an experiment wherein they would fire alpha particles -- large projectiles from an atomic point of view, at very thin foil of gold. Most would go through, some would deflect. They would need statistics on the angle of deflection. This meant sitting in an incredibly dark basement staring for tiny flashes and meticulously recording them for hours upon hours upon hours. Rutherford was brilliant, but had little patience and so the job was given to Marsden.

He did what an undergrad research assistant is supposed to do -- the crapwork. And he was careful noting all of the scintillations for hour after long hour. Even some that reflected at very large angles, something that should not have happened. He could have waved it off as his eyes playing tricks. But he didn't. He recorded it and looked for it, such flashes not happening often. But he told Geiger and Rutherford about it.

Rutherford took Marsden very seriously despite their difference in social position and thought about what would cause such radical changes in direction. It had to be something hard. And thus was discovered the structure of the atom, something for which Rutherford received the Nobel Prize.

But behind every great advance, there are people quietly who do the hard work. We rarely give these folks the credit they deserve, but they are always there. The world is full of gaffers and gophers, secretaries and offensive linemen, ghost writers and joke writers, TAs and RAs, people who don't get the glory or adoration, but whose dedication is paramount in making things work. Happy birthday Ernest Marsden and thanks to all the Ernest Marsdens out there.

Jeopardy!, Errors, and Artificial Intelligence

Thinking about the man vs. machine competition that is going on this week on Jeopardy! The challenge is to get computers to interact in a way that accounts for the sophistication of actual intelligent human discourse replete with allusions, puns, and plays on words. The concept behind it is a particular picture of artificial intelligence: achievement. A computer displays intelligence when it can do the sort of tasks that humans can do. This is different from the approach offer by Alan Turing who offered an experiential criterion, that is, if you cannot tell whether you are interacting with a person or a computer, then the computer is displaying intelligence.

But last year, when my personal hero Doug Hofstadter (how cool am I, I call him Doug -- he's actually a really nice guy) came to campus, he took the question in a different direction. He said that if we want to think of a computer as intelligent, we shouldn't look at what it does well and see if it is the same sort of thing we do well, we should go in the other direction. Ask whether the computer makes mistakes in the same sorts of ways we make mistakes. Humans make interesting and peculiar kinds of errors and the question is whether we see computer errors of the same sort.

In the match, the computer did answer some questions wrong and in ways that were similar to wrong answers given by its human counterparts. Which is interesting. But I want to think of the sort of errors the human mind makes.

There are Oliver Sacks style wiring problems. My favorite of which is Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioophthalmic Outburst syndrome or A.C.H.O.O. which is a common condition in which exposure to sudden bright sunlight causes sneezing. The nerves from the eyes and nose are close together and in many people strong signals from the eyes gets misinterpreted by the brain as coming from a disturbance in the nose triggering the sneezing reflex.

But Hofstadter's interest is more in cognitive errors. The sort he presented are typified by something TheWife said a while back when we were having trouble with our well. She needed me to go out and open up the metal plate covering the opening and clearly couldn't decide whether to say "lid" or "cover" and so asked me to go out and "open the liver."

A similar sort is confusing words that are somewhat close in meaning and in sound. Last night at a little league meeting, the head of the league was explaining the means of drafting teams which is a cooperative approach. He meant to say that the coaches confer on decisions about which player to draft, but he repeatedly said that they commiserate about the choices. While I am sure that there are some players (or parents) about which coaches can commiserate, that is clearly not what he meant. But both words begin with the prefix "co" and refer to situations in which people come together verbally.

But then there are other sorts. Some deal with linguistic expectations. Yesterday, TheWife had rung in on skype just as the chair of our Women, Gender, and Sexuality program walked into my office for a meeting. I told TheWife, "Hang on a sec, Sweetie Pie. I have to talk with someone for a couple minutes. I'll call you back." Seeing that I was on the computer and hearing "Hang on a sec, Sweetie Pie," my colleague responded "o.k." and ducked out of the office. I was horrified for a moment thinking that the head of our women's study program thinks I just called her "Sweetie Pie," but, of course, after about 5 seconds, she realized the full context, that she had misinterpreted the utterance and found it amusing. Had she processed the entire utterance, that it was not an attempt to communicate with her would have been clear -- I am quite friendly with my colleague, but not THAT friendly -- and on a second processing, it was. But the original interpretation came from assessing not only the utterance, but the context which led to certain expectations which were partially fulfilled by the utterance. This is a common kind of error for humans we hear what we expect to hear, not what was said.

What are other human errors that would be interesting to find in computer behavior?

What's the Difference: True, Actual, and Factual

So, what is the difference between true, actual, and factual? Is your answer true, actual, or facutal?

RIP George Shearing

George Shearing has died at 91. A master pianist, Shearing was an early member of the cool movement which provided a contrast to the frenetic bebop of the times. Combining a strong sense of melody with the thoughtfulness of bebop, he created magic for decades.



There is perhaps no better epitaph than the heartfelt tribute of Kerouac in On the Road:

Dean and I went to see Shearing at Birdland in the midst of the long, mad weekend. The place was deserted, we were the first customers, ten o’clock. Shearing came out, blind, led by the hand to his keyboard. He was a distinguished-looking Englishman with a stiff white collar, slightly beefy, blond, with a delicate English-summer’s-night air about him that came out in the first rippling sweet number he played as the bass-player leaned to him reverently and thrummed the beat. The drummer, Denzil Best, sat motionless except for his wrists snapping the brushes. And Shearing began to rock; a smile broke over his ecstatic face; he began to rock in the piano seat, back and forth, slowly at first, then the beat went up, and he began rocking fast, his left foot jumped up with every beat, his neck began to rock crookedly, he brought his face down to the keys, he pushed his hair back, his combed hair dissolved, he began to sweat. The music picked up. The bass-player hunched over and socked it in, faster and faster, it seemed faster and faster, that’s all. Shearing began to play his chords; they rolled out of the piano in great rich showers, you’d think the man wouldn’t have time to line them up. They rolled and rolled like the sea. Folks yelled for him to “Go!” Dean was sweating; the sweat poured down his collar. “There he is! That’s him! Old God! Old God Shearing! Yes! Yes! Yes!” And Shearing was conscious of the madman behind him, he could hear every one of Dean’s gasps and imprecations, he could sense it though he couldn’t see. “That’s right!” Dean said. “Yes!” Shearing smiled, he rocked. Shearing rose from the piano, dripping with sweat; these were his great 1949 days before he became cool and commercial. When he was gone Dean pointed to the empty piano seat. “God’s empty chair,” he said. On the piano a horn sat; its golden shadow made a strange reflection along the desert caravan painted on the wall behind the drums. God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere.

Rest in peace George Shearing.

What's the Difference: Valentines Edition

One for the heart and mind today. What's difference between a crush, infatuation, and love at first sight?

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Clean Air Act?

My Fellow Comedists,

There is a battle in the Malawi courts over the interpretation of a new clean air law:

The Local Courts Bill, to be introduced next week reads: "Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious to the public to the health of persons in general dwelling or carrying on business in the neighbourhood or passing along a public way shall be guilty of a misdemeanour." Mr Chaponda, a trained lawyer, insists that this includes farting. However, he was directly contradicted by Solicitor General Anthony Kamanga, who says the reference to "fouling the air" means pollution.

Does this mean that you could be charged with attempted murder in Malawi for a "silent, but deadly"? Apparently, this is what "passes" for organized crime there.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Doggone It, Is It Music?

A colleague is teaching a class in the philosophy of music and began by asking if certain instances of sound production fit the definition of music. He played this clip:
The class contended that if this was a free act by Tucker, they would consider it music. But if Tucker was trained to do this by way of treats or some other means of conditioning, then it would not be music. The intention on the part of the dog was a determining factor in deciding the question, they held. Does this really matter?

What about the dog in this clip from Pink Floyd at Pompeii where it is clear that the dog is just yelping at the sound of the harmonica?

Is there a difference between the two scenarios? Are either music? Both?

Why Do You Know That?

Been a while since we've had one of these. It's the converse of "Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics" where you provide everyone with those tidbits of useless knowledge you have stored away for no good reason.

My contribution:

The capital of West Virginia was originally named Charles Town until they were informed that there already was a town in West Virginia named Charles Town (over by Harpers Ferry) and so they shortened it to Charleston.

So what do you know and why do you know that?

The Moral Import of Modern Conservatism

With the centenary of Ronald Reagan's birth this week, it is a good time to consider his intellectual legacy. Reagan launched his presidential bid with a full-throated endorsement of states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three people were murdered 1964 for registering African-Americans to vote, an act that was seen by Southern whites as interference with that state's "rights." One might see this act as an attempt to court the votes of racists or as contributing to legitimizing of racism in America itself, but if want to be maximally charitable, we can see Reagan's legacy as connected to an interesting moral concern.

Susan Wolf's most famous work is an article entitled "Moral Saints" in which she asks in terms of ethical theory, how good is good enough? Utilitarians, for example, contend that an act is morally good if and only if it maximizes overall utility, that is, it brings about the best overall consequences for everyone affected. Wolf asks why we need to maximize the consequences, isn't there a point where they could be a little better, but that is clearly sufficient to have done the job morally? Do I have to spend every spare waking minute helping out in a soup kitchen or could I relax and at least do something fun and silly this week? Surely, to be good is not to be perfect, the good life needs to be one that is worth living, is attainable and consistent with a life that is rewardingly lived.

The question that modern conservatism asks is related to Wolf's concern. Calls for smaller government and self-sufficiency are really motivated by the desire to pay less in taxes. Less regulation is not an abstract bid for liberty, but as a decrease in the obligation I incur to consider the welfare of others and focus on my own bottom line. One could see this as greed, a vice, but the most charitable read is that it is just asking the Wolf-like question, when is my moral obligation to the other fulfilled. When is enough enough? When can I ignore the homeless person and say I gave at the office? If I am my brother's keeper, when can I finally consider him kept and worry about me? Why do I have to be the one who cares? In the Reagan era, we had a blockbuster movie tell us that greed is good and a major prime time news program featuring conservative commentator John Stossel arguing exactly the same thing. The free market is free in that it frees me from worrying about others. Indeed the point of Stossel and others is that the Other is better served when I do only think of myself, the structure will be healthier for all leading to the best overall consequences if I do not help those in need. Greed will meet or minimize need.

We can separate the question from the politics, though, and it is a valuable question to ask. At what point am I freed from my moral responsibilities to the Other? Am I always on the moral clock? Can I ever close the door in the face of the Other say go away, I'm just going to have some moral me time?

Utopia

Yesterday was the 533rd anniversary of the birth of Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia. What More pictured as utopian would hardly strike us now as such. For example, in Utopia, there is slavery,

"THEY do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those that are taken in battle; nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those of other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime, or, which is more common, such as their merchants find condemned to die in those parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes redeem at low rates; and in other places have them for nothing. They are kept at perpetual labor, and are always chained, but with this difference, that their own natives are treated much worse than others; they are considered as more profligate than the rest, and since they could not be restrained by the advantages of so excellent an education, are judged worthy of harder usage. Another sort of slaves are the poor of the neighboring countries, who offer of their own accord to come and serve them; they treat these better, and use them in all other respects as well as their own countrymen, except their imposing more labor upon them, which is no hard task to those that have been accustomed to it; and if any of these have a mind to go back to their own country, which indeed falls out but seldom, as they do not force them to stay, so they do not send them away empty-handed."

Nor any premarital embracing,

"Their women are not married before eighteen, nor their men before two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces before marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege of marriage is denied them, unless they can obtain a special warrant from the Prince."

Everyone wears the same thing,

"Throughout the island they wear the same sort of clothes without any other distinction, except what is necessary to distinguish the two sexes, and the married and unmarried. The fashion never alters; and as it is neither disagreeable nor uneasy, so it is suited to the climate, and calculated both for their summers and winters."

And they have only two games,

"They do not so much as know dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games: they have, however, two sorts of games not unlike our chess; the one is between several numbers, in which one number, as it were, consumes another: the other resembles a battle between the virtues and the vices, in which the enmity in the vices among themselves, and their agreement against virtue, is not unpleasantly represented; together with the special oppositions between the particular virtues and vices; as also the methods by which vice either openly assaults or secretly undermines virtue, and virtue on the other hand resists it."

Clearly, Utopia is not a utopia. If one were to re-write the work now, what elements would a contemporary utopia include?

Public Ownership of the Means of Superbowl Production

The Green Bay Packers have won the Superbowl, bringing the trophy named for their legendary coach back to the city of 100,000 people. Titletown, USA has another title. The Packers are owned by the fans, by the community in which they play, far and away the smallest of any major sports team. They are a non-profit organization. For those who think that profit motive always leads to better decisions and that the invisible hand of the marketplace necessarily makes institutions more effective and rational...all I have to say is communitarianism 31, private enterprise 25. But hey, the capitalists put up a fight and if it weren't for the turnovers, it could have gone the other way.

Happy Year of the Waskally Wabbit

My Fellow Comedists,

This week the Chinese calendar took a left turn at Albuquerque and the New Year's festivities ushered in the year of the rabbit. So, in honor of the new year, it seems only fitting to ask about the funniest Bugs Bunny cartoon ever made.

My money is on the opera ones:


Others?

Live, love, laugh, and a happy, healthy New Year,

Irreverend Steve

Irony Can Be So Ironic: Egypt Edition

I was browsing through the new acquisitions shelves at our library yesterday and came across Tarek Osman's new book, "Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak." On the one hand, it's great to be right about something. On the other hand, it's got to hurt having a decade of research and analysis rendered obsolete in a single week precisely because you were right. Let's hope his editor at Yale University Press has asked him for another book called "Egypt Past the Brink."

What's the Difference?: Critique, Criticism, Objection

What's the difference between a critique, a criticism, and an objection?

Ernie Banks and Existentialism

Yesterday was the 80th birthday of one of my heroes, Ernie Banks, the Hall of Fame shortstop for the Chicago Cubs. His nickname was Mr. Sunshine and everyday he would say "It's a beautiful day for a ballgame, let's play two." He wasn't playing in Los Angeles where everyday is a beautiful day for a ballgame, he was playing in Chicago. And it's not like the Cubs were winning, far far from it. But that was the point. Ernie Banks provided his own sunshine. Life is a joyful place, revel in it. In our success obsessed culture, it was about playing two. the point is to be playful, to love the process, life activities as an end and not a means.

We've got someone on campus today talking about existentialism, the early 20th century French movement in which life's meaninglessness gives rise to angst, anxiety, and fear. The lack of meaning puts the ultimate responsibility upon the shoulders of the individual to create his or her own meaning by acting, by doing, by unguided choices for which there are no, can be no helpful signposts. We create our own essence as an act of will. We choose to be who we decide to be by acting, by being that person. This responsibility, they argue, gives rise to intellectual trembling before its importance and emptiness.

Existentialism is dark, heavy, and brooding. Everything that is supposed to be the hallmark of a deep mind. But it seems that the embodiment of this existential being is not Camus' Sisyphus sneering at the Gods in contempt or his absurd murderer from The Stranger, but rather Mr. Sunshine. In the gray cold of early Chicago spring, he willed himself truly happy wanting to go out and possibly lose yet another double-header with his hapless Cubbies because, gosh dang it, he got to play. There is no dread in taking the field to likely be beaten yet again, instead there is playfulness, joy, and love of the game and life. THAT would be the true absurd hero.

Passions and Avocations

Weekends are busy. The less short of the shorties has an acting class and the shorter of the shorties is taking a clinic teaching the basic skills of playing catcher. It was exciting watching both of them find their thing, something that was not only fun for them, but that transformed them, an activity where they really transcended the little person you see in other aspects of their lives, where the hard work was not drudgery but clearly was being fueled by a fire inside, something purely internal. What worries me is that I have the same thing when I go to work in the morning -- teaching philosophy isn't just a job for me, it's an avocation, a calling. I could not imagine doing anything else and feeling whole in the same way. Odds are she won't become an actor and he won't become a catcher. But, there will be ways for it to remain a part of their lives if they are creative.

At the same time, they have had the experience of feeling that feeling, of being able to feel like they are where they belong, of being driven, of swimming with the current. My question is whether everyone has that something. Is there some activity -- whether employable or not -- to which one would gladly spend one's life and energy, that is a part of you? Does everyone have a calling, it's just that some are in more fortunate circumstances to be able to answer the call or do some people live completely take it or leave it lives where numerous acceptable options remain open, but no have to have it needs are present?

The Feast of Saint W.C.

This week would see the 131st birthday of W.C. Fields, the famed alcoholic misanthrope. He had the rare ability to play a completely detestable character that you could not help but love. He is the ultimate in the role played so wonderfully these days by Bill Murray and Steve Carrell.

He left home and began performing at 18 taking a juggling act to Vaudeville. And quite the juggler he was.



But it was his appearances in film and on radio that created the character we came to love so much. The down on his luck drunk who hates kids and dogs, love wine, women, and song, well, at least wine and women. A guy who admits no flaws even when you can't help but stare right at them. A con man with a tongue as sharp as his patience is short who is always scamming for something.

It was a character that in parts resembled his real self. While he never drank in his younger days to keep his juggling abilities sharp, in his later years he did turn to the bottle enthusiastically and in the end it claimed his life. He also harbored deep bigotries, a misogynist and racist who in his will left a sum of money to start an orphanage that would be restricted to white children. A master at his craft, but a truly flawed character.

He suffered as an adult from rosacea, an illness which gave him the characteristic flush cheeks and bulbous nose that made him so recognizable.

We leave you today with some famous lines from W. C. Fields:

"How well I remember my first encounter with The Devil's Brew. I happened to stumble across a case of bourbon--and went right on stumbling for several days thereafter."

"I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally."

"The movie people would have nothing to do with me until they heard me speak in a Broadway play, then they all wanted to sign me for the silent movies."

"Business is an establishment that gives you the legal, even though unethical, right to screw the naive--right, left, and in the middle."

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain unless you've used up all the other four-letter words."

"During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days."

"Marriage is better than leprosy because it's easier to get rid of."

"Start every day off with a smile and get it over with."

"It's hard to tell where Hollywood ends and the D.T.'s begin."

"Say anything that you like about me except that I drink water."

Live, love and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Universalizing Art and Constricting Philosophy

Gwydion asks,

Are there any objective, universal assertions that can be truthfully and correctly made about the nature of creative endeavors (writing, for example, or painting) for all creative practitioners? In other words, is there anything that is universally, demonstrably, or even measurably true about writing for all writers, for example? (In the way that pi is pi for all measurers?)

If we all looking general propositions, then we can start with the trivial, definitional ones, e.g., all painters use paint, all writers write. These are universal and true because they say nothing about the process other than it is what it is.

The question, though, asks for what Kant called synthetic propositions, that is, statements that contain information. Is there any universal proposition that is true of all writers or all painters that says something about writing or painting. In the decades around the turn of the 20th century, we saw almost simultaneously in virtually all creative and intellectual fields, an attempt to ferret out such claims and violate them. Art became about what it is to be a work of art, music rejected tonal centers, geometry surrendered the intuitive axioms of Euclid. All pushed the line that distinguished art from non-art, the meaning of geometry, basic assumptions about architecture, into places we had never previously considered. Conventions were challenged. Standard definitions undermined. This question asks, a century later, despite the best efforts of the intellectual wrecking ball, is there anything left standing, are there any universals left that could not be undermined?

In the case of the creative arts, it seems that while the artist has been freed to affect the viewer in so many new and unexpected ways, the basic relationship between artist and viewer remains. The reader still reads, still approaches words from beginning to end and expects to come away with a transformed view of the world in some way. The viewer still approaches a piece of art and opens oneself up to what it does to the viewer in that moment of experience. Certainly with on-line publishing that allows through the use of links for writing that is not strictly linear and interactive works of art that put the viewer in part of the role of creator of the artistic experience, still there is always a meta-standpoint from which the individualized experience was shaped in the usual way by the artist or writer. I think that this relationship in a certain sense is based on the parent-child or teacher-student relationship, that viewers approach creative work as the apprentice who may or may not ultimately reject the master as not having truly been a master who had anything to teach, but the basic underlying relationship between creator and viewer seems to me to be unaffected by all of the revolutions in the creative world.

In the other direction, Kerry asks,

In your judgment, what big tent philosopher has done more than any other to derail future philosophers from asking good questions or following fruitful lines of investigation? (My money, for example, is on Descartes. But I don't wish to dogmatize. There are probably lots of good candidates.)

I would argue that we are still recovering from the illegitimate strictures at the beginning of the 20th century in philosophy. While every other field was expanding itself, philosophy broke into two and like a nasty divorce, each side completely alienated the insights of the other.

Carnap and the logical positivists in their radical decontextualizing of knowledge kept questions connecting the philosophical and the sociological from being meaningful. The anti-historical approach kept questions about the actual scientific practices of actual scientists from being asked for generations.

Similarly, Heidegger trapped Continental philosophy in a hermeneutic circle-jerk that gave rise to the postmodernism in which the entire world got lost in a haze of social construction. Epistemology wasn't dead, it just wasn't returning their calls because it had no desire to remain in an abusive relationship.

The second half of the 20th century was a slow shaking off of the artificiality and illegitimate constrictions of the analytic/continental split, something I think we are slowly starting to heal, the excesses of each being pared down a step at a time.

Stink Bugs and Facebook

FBC writes,

I plant a decent sized garden. I grow tomatoes, several types of squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and various peppers. I’m thinking of trying corn this coming year too. The last couple of years have been rough. Between the blight and various pests (especially stink bugs something else I couldn't identify) I’ve lost a lot of yield. What are the most effective organic methods for dealing with these?

First of all, my suggestion is to try to send it all to zucchini and save the rest of the garden...and all of your family and neighbors come zucchini picking time.

Blight effects wet leaves, so the key is to pick off leaves that show the blight as soon as possible and try to aid in drying by keeping plants staked, tied up, and lower leaves pruned back to increase the air flow letting them dry quicker. As for the stink bugs, unfortunately, I have no idea what to do other than swear. Some people suggest planting companion plants that repel them like radishes or plants like sunflowers that attract them away, but I have both in my garden and they still seem to find the tomatoes. If anyone has something that works, I'd be willing to nominate you for a Nobel.

Philo asks,

How can Facebook be worth $50 billion?

Hype and your personal information to sell.

Hanno asks,

What is tastier, crawfish etouffee or boiled crawfish?

It is an empirical question that I plan to continue studying. Steamboat Bill's tonight?

Education

A couple of education questions:

Thongor! asks,

What are your thoughts on K-12 math education in the United States?

This is something I think about quite a lot as I not only have children, a deep passion for science and science education, but am working with a colleague who is a science and math education researcher on a project at the moment. All of the measurable markers with respect to K-12 math education in the US indicate a system that is broken. Why is this?

I think there are three reasons. First, while there are some very talented and committed high school math teachers out there (some of my former students of whom I am the most proud of are math and science teachers), in general, education, especially secondary education, fails to attract the most qualified people in our society. We pay our teachers terribly and we give them no social status, so those who can get better paying and more prestigious jobs tend to. Those who major or minor in education often do so as a fall back choice in college. It is often people who think it is a safe choice and love children, but not necessarily those for whom mathematics is something they love and understand well. Elementary school mathematics is taught by those who do not specialize in math education and so we set our children off on the wrong foot.

In many cases, we then set up mathematics learning in large classrooms where students learn at different speeds, but are all given the same instruction on the same time line. We think that testing makes students learn better. We give them far too little in terms of resources.

And then we send them home to parents who are themselves undereducated in mathematics and are either mathphobic or care little about the field. We certainly cannot put the blame solely in the classroom. This is a larger cultural problem.

There is actually very good work going on in the study of mathematical pedagogy. The problem is that to change the system to use these new and more effective techniques, it takes money and political will. More money requires taxes to be spent and we couldn't possibly do that to improve our children and thereby our society more generally. The phrase "new math" has roughly the same meaning as "new Coke." Adjustments to math education have been poisoned in the cultural mind by perceptions of past efforts.

As many, most famously John Allen Paulos, has shown, there is large scale innumeracy in American culture and it has negative consequences. How do we change it? Heck if I know.

bonny asks,

What are the advantages and disadvantages in a liberal arts education?

The advantage of a liberal arts education is that it provides the student with a flexible mind capable of solving problems and making meaning in multiple ways. It helps facilitate the development of an intellect that finds connections. Instead of intellectual vo-tech training, the focus is on development as an intellectual, something that I believe helps round and fill out one's life as a human.

The disadvantage is that it is incredibly resource intensive and therefore inaccessible to most. As a result, those who seek out and secure a liberal arts education tend to be surrounded with like souls. It is something that entrenches certain social divisions, which is unfortunate.

Corpses, Titles, and Seniors

Three interesting semantic questions this go 'round.

jw asks,

are human corpses people?

Like so many questions about meaning, the answer is contextual. Corpses are human bodies, and so in some contexts held to be more than mere objects, better than things, but not given the full consideration of people. We do not afford most rights, say, the right to vote, that we would have granted to the formerly living occupant of the body to the lifeless body itself. (Insert joke about Chicago politics here). In certain ways, there is a dualist viewpoint that is assumed in the law. At the same time, we do grant them special status of the same sort as living beings. Just as one can no longer own other human beings with the dissolution of the institution of slavery, so too one cannot own a corpse. It still in some sense belongs to itself and cannot be bought or sold like other objects. So, the answer to your question is "it depends." Give me the context and I can tell you whether in that situation we consider a corpse a human...leaving open the zombie angle altogether.

A Stranger asks,

How does one tell when they can assume a title? A Professor could be easy, once one is hired by a school, or a Doctor as one that has received a PhD or MD. How about an actor? Can you call yourself an actor if you only do summer stock? What constitutes an artist? Can a businessman that plays guitar on weekends call himself a musician? What about philosopher? At what point could you call yourself one without guilt?

Again, meaning requires context. In the cases of degrees like an M.D. or Ph.D. there is the ambiguity of having finished all requirements for the degree and having had it conferred at commencement ceremonies. Usually the former is sufficient.

In the case of terms like artist, musician, or philosopher, there several different senses of the word, we can distinguish between five of them. One is the sense of an active practitioner -- a painter is one who paints. If there are not paintings of yours currently in the works or recently completed, then you are not a painter. It is in this way that one could say, "Well, I used to be a painter in my early days, but I haven't been one for years." A broader meaning is one whose work still exists, as in "Person X is the painter who created this mural" whether X is still painting or not. On this sense, a painter is anyone who has painted. Sense number three is that one has an innate talent for the act or an abiding passion for it. For example, consider the claims, "She has no training, but she was a born painter" or "It doesn't matter the roadblocks you put up, whether you allow me to perform publicly or not, I will always be a musician." In this sense, it is not a relation to anything external, but an element of the person's being. A fourth sense is that one engages in the activity professionally, that one one makes his or her living doing that. When one refers to oneself as a philosopher, for example, it is usually assumed not just that one spends one's time thinking about the deeper questions, but that it is the person's livelihood. This is subtly distinct from a fourth sense which is that one is a member of the community of working practitioners. One, on this view, is a philosopher if one is retired and no longer making a living as a philosopher or is an independent scholar not employed by an institution of higher learning, but is still actively engaged in the work of social institutions around the activity -- publishing in journals, attending and contributing to conferences, editing the writings of others,... This ambiguity is what often gets us in trouble. When we call ourselves "an artist" at a dinner party, the listener will usually assume that it means that one makes a living doing it, whereas if you meant just that you have an artist's soul you may get accused of fibbing when the full picture emerges.

Megan asks,

When does someone officially become the first or senior (ie John David I or John David Sr)? Does their name on legal documents actually change? Can you be a senior in the anticipation that you will have a kid who will be "junior"?

For this one, we have to distinguish between name as legal identifier and name as informal identifier. Just as a woman who takes her husband's name must fill out the appropriate forms to legally change her name, so too a father who names his son after himself must do the same. But one can do this at any time, indeed, there would not have to be a junior to make oneself a senior. It would be unusual to add Sr. to your name if you have no children, but legal names are just labels and you could choose nearly any one you'd like. Alternatively, you could also choose not to even if you do name your child after yourself. In this case, the Sr. is not a legal name, but just used informally to distinguish one from the child. In this looser sense, you become a Sr. as soon as there is a Jr., but the grandchild would be III whether or not there is IV.

More tomorrow.

Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics

With the start of the semester, it seems a good time for this.

I have schtick I do at the beginning of all my classes where I let students ask any question at all, anything from auto mechanics to quantum mechanics and if I don't know the answer I try to find it. When I first started the Playground, some former students asked if I could recreate it here, so every once in a while I do. If there is a question you've always wanted to ask, let 'er rip and we'll try to get to as many as I can during the week.

Let Me Be Brief

This week is the 76th anniversary of jockey shorts. It was this week in 1935 that Coopers, Inc. first introduced the legless briefs. The name "jockey" came from the fact that it was modeled on the jock strap and designed to give the same support in a non-athletic undergarment. They became so popular that the company changed its name to Jockey to capture the brand.

So, in the spirit of Bill Clinton, boxers or briefs?

Ike's Farewell Address

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower's farewell address, the speech in which he warned of the rise of the military-industrial complex. The theme of the entire address is, to borrow a phrase from another former President with a connection to this place, that we not only have a government of and by the people, but we need to have a government for the people. Government is in place to help our fellow Americans in profound ways. This is just a decade after the Great Depression and the power of the government to help the most vulnerable among us is not something that is in doubt. But the desire for power on the part of moneyed interests can get in the way of the government’s ability to help Americans and with the rising influence of the military-industrial complex, we need to look out for those we are supposed to be looking out for.

But Eisenhower saw another change that has happened with the conclusion of the Second World War. Not only is the private sector changed in ways that ought to concern us, but which cannot be reversed, science too has changed. And so he gives us a second warning:

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Just as we need to watch out for the new captains of industry, so too, he worries, we may need to protect ourselves from a scientific-technological elite in order to have a government that does what it needs to do to encourage the flourishing of the American people. At a time when we are still having to fight legislatures who want to teach Creationism instead of biology, it may seem a bit quaint to look at worries of a take-over of government by a scientific elite, but there is something interesting and deep in Eisenhower’s insight.

Has the military-industrial complex usurped science in such a way that the same concern covers both? With the likes of Monsanto, Dow Chemical, the Tobacco Institute,...has the corporatization of science created a technological elite that shapes how we think? For example, one cannot speak to a group without a PowerPoint presentation meaning that one can only think in slides and bullet points.

Has this fear of a scientific-technological elite come to be in the same way that the powerful military-industrial complex concerns did?

Why Do We Enjoy Being Scared?

Today is Edgar Allen Poe's birthday. While there have been gruesome and scary tales going back to the ancients, Macabre or Gothic literature emerged as a genre unto itself with Poe and H.P. Lovecraft's writing in the 19th century. These were works of art for whom the scary was the point. It has become part of our popular art ever since.

Horror was originally invoked as a warning, as a tool to keep us from doing what we ought no. the point of the scary work was that we did not like the scary and the moral of the work was to avoid that which brought it about. But in art since Poe it has become mere entertainment.

Why do scary works, like the writings of Stephen King or the films of Wes Craven, attract us? Is the reason why it appears in the 19th century because modern life shields us from the intensity of emotion we experienced regularly before industrialization and horror takes us back to it? Is it that we have latent fears that are naturally a part of us, and the safety of modern life allows us to explore them casually? Is it like a joke where there is an incongruity between the scary world of the horror work and the more mundane one in which we live? Why do we love art that scares us?

Finding Great Teachers

We're about to have some candidates come to campus for an opening we have. Finding someone who will become a solid scholar is fairly straightforward. In conversation you can get a sense of the breadth and creativity. In writing samples, you get a sense of rigor. From the cv you get a sense of progress.

But we are hiring a teacher. What do you look for in a teaching demonstration that shows you have someone who will be wonderful in the classroom? What are the marks of a good teacher? of a great teacher? What little things show you that the person in front of you possesses pedagogical excellence?

New Holidays

The observation of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday is our most recent calendar addition. It was added in 1983, although it was fought for a decade to follow in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and, of course, Arizona.

It leads to further questions about the holidays we have and those we need. "Holiday" is a contraction of "holy day," in other words, they are days set aside by a culture to celebrate the values and virtues it most cherishes. On these grounds, which current holidays should go, what new holidays should be added, and which current holidays need re-interpreting?

Classroom Comebacks

My Fellow Comedists,

Every Friday, I teach philosophy at a local middle school. Yesterday, we were talking about determinism. After the explanation was over and it was clear every understood the question, I asked whether they had free will. One student looked up and said, "Not in my house." It broke everyone up.

So, with the new semester starting, this weekend's question is "what is the funniest comment you ever heard/delivered in a classroom?"

My contribution comes from one of the first classes I ever taught, an evening ethics class for Anne Arundel Community College. We were discussing the difference between ethical precepts and social mores. One of the students raised his hand and asked, "Steve, what are mores?" I looked straight at him and said, "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a more." Greatest set up in my life.

Funniest classroom comebacks?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Rhetorical Insanity

A second element of the right-wing commentator's element that they bear absolutely no responsibility for the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords is that Jared Loughner is CRAAAAAAZY. They are pleading innocence by reason of someone else's insanity. But what is really happening is an equivocation on the notion of insane.

Their argument is:

1. Jared Loughner is insane
2. Insane people are irrational.
3. Only rational actions have explanations in terms of the actor's reasoning.

4. Therefore, we cannot explain the shooting in terms of Loughner's reasoning, so any claim that his reasoning was influenced by right-wing invective is necessarily false.

The problem is with premise 2.

No one wants to say that Loughner was in a reasonable state of mind, but the words "crazy" and "insane" are conveniently vague for the right-wing commentators. The action was cognitively complex. It required planning. It required timing. It required knowing whom he was looking for and there were certainly reason why he was looking for her -- a Jewish Democrat. This was not a random act, this was not someone having a seizure and then throwing fish out of a window to stop rampaging flying squirrels. No, this was someone who was angry about big government taking over and who thought we should only use gold and not cash. Where did these beliefs come from? Is it then a pure coincidence that he would target a Jewish Democrat?

Let's avoid the words "insane" and "crazy" and instead use "psychopath." That seems to make some rhetorical difference, doesn't it? Psychopaths are capable of being quite rational. They have reasons for what they do, often complex arguments supporting them. Those arguments and reasons are bad ones to be sure, but they do not defy explanation the way that right-wing pundits want to claim.

Were Loughner's reasons influenced by right-wing invective. Most likely. Should those responsible for it bear any culpability here? We heard violent screams coming from the audiences of McCain/Palin rallies. we saw eliminationist sentiments coming from the Tea Partiers. We saw conservatives encouraging supporters to come to a rally on the National Mall armed in order to send a message, a threat that if their policy demands were not met, then there might be shootings. And it is in this social context that Sarah Palin puts crosshairs over a map of candidates she wants eliminated. So, now there is a shooting of one. Who possibly could see THAT coming? When you work hard to raise up an army of bullies, you lose the right to act shocked when one of them beats someone up on the playground for his milk money.

Poe's Law Nevermore?

Our friends Scott Aiken and bob Talisse have an interesting post up about the argumentative effects of Poe's law. Poe's law is:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake (it) for the genuine article.

They neither endorse nor deny Poe's law but ask what effect it truth would have on argumentation.

Their concern is that, as Cass Sunstein discusses in great detail in his wonderful book Infotopia, dismissal of one's opponents as irrational leads to group think which in turn leads to intellectual polarization, that is views becoming more and more extreme on both sides without rational checks. This is an effect that social psychologists have documented over and over again.

We've discussed before what happens when an opponent becomes the strawman, when they hold absurd views, but what is novel here is the notion of parody. It is when parody becomes impossible that Aikin and Talisse's scenario comes in to play, when one side has motive to disengage critically from the arguments of the other and the discourse community thereby falls into danger. So, what then are the preconditions for the possibility of parody?

Nathan Poe's claim about Creationism is actually not new. Spike Jones said exactly the same thing in the early 1950s as he retired. Rock and roll music, he proclaimed, could not be parodied. We might read this as sour grapes. His beloved big band swing had been replaced from the dominant position in popular music and he could not adapt his act to the changing times, so he was bitter. As Weird Al Yankovich would show decades later, Jones was wrong.

But was he? Maybe at the time Jones spoke, he was right. Maybe it was only decades later that parody was possible. Rich Little used to say that Johnny Carson was the most difficult impression to do because he had so many mannerisms that none was iconic. doing impressions is not just a matter of getting the voice and pacing correct, but also including in the act vocal regularities (word inversions, puns, sentence structures) and bodily gestures that are associated with the person. The imitation is recognized as parody precisely once the three-dimensional person is made into a two-dimensional icon which is then reproduced with varying degrees of skill, but the icon seems to have to exist before parody is possible.

Maybe Spike Jones was right because rock and roll was too new to have an icon. Thomas Kuhn argues that every scientific field goes through a period of "pre-science" in which advocates have not acquired a dominant paradigm, that is when it is still up for debate how to talk about their subject, when the linguistic rules and basic assumptions are not explicitly worked out. Without this clear linguistic substructure, those outside have nothing to hang onto when trying to make sense of the conversation within that community (Kuhn himself would argue that those outside can never make any sense of the conversation happening within, but this surely is too strong).

So, I would argue that there needs to be a linguistic structure in place which is sufficiently nailed down to turn it into an icon, an overly-simplistic representation of that discourse, to be able to allow parody. But does modern Creationism have such a unified linguistic and argumentative structure? Maybe Poe's law is really an argument that it doesn't, that it is still in the process of forming a coherent paradigm, which it may or may not ever do but has not yet. Similarly, when we move the example from Creationism to the folks at Westboro Baptist, again, maybe the inability to parody is their lack of intellectual boundaries, in their not having an icon because of their ability to flow wherever the current tragedy or crisis lays. In this case, it is not that we are dealing with strawmen as Aikin and Talisse worry, but that we no longer have well-defined views in opposition which always is a challenge for critical argumentation, but in the messiness of real life happens often. Thus they are exactly right that we might need to think about what this means in terms of argumentation because it is a different stance than we usually have to adopt.

Causes and the Gifford Assassination Attempt

The contemporary debate over whether right-wing invective caused the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gifford brings to mind Bertrand Russell's quip that causation is like the British royal family, it is kept around only because it is wrongly assumed to do no harm. The notion of cause and effect that Russell refers to is the naive one in which A causing B is like the puppeteer moving his hand and having the marionette pick up a leg. Scientists and philosophers, those who make inferences about cause and effect relations and who think about the nature of such relations, have not used such an overly-simplistic concept for over a century. It is reserved only for political pundits...who are kept around only because they are wrongly assumed to do no harm.

It is certainly clear that one cannot trace any given utterance by a politician or pundit to the pulling of the trigger. So, the move to the naive picture of cause and effect, of course, says that there is no connection. But what happens when we think in terms of a more realistic concept?

Consider the fact that suicides increase during recessions. Now, if we try to understand why any given person tragically took his or her own life, we would have to appeal to biographical details including romantic life and professional and financial details, as well as facts about his or her physical and psychological health. Never would we say, "Oh, if only the GDP were growing at a healthy clip this could have been avoided." But if you want to tell the true story, if you want to understand completely why this sad event occurred, in many cases you cannot neglect macroeconomic factors even if none of them are the puppeteer's string. We can call a factor a "little c" cause if it is a necessary component of the story and a "big C" Cause if it is a necessary condition, if the effect could not have occurred without it. The recession is a little c cause in many of these cases, it is for many instances a crucial part of the background of the story, but the rhetorical trick used by the pundits and politicians is to restrict the conversation to only big C causes. Since we could never say that details about the larger economy directly brought about any given suicide, it would not be allowed to be considered a cause. But, of course, it is.

Jackie Robinson and Brooks Robinson were two of the greatest third basemen in the history of baseball. But there is, of course, a major difference between them. If you were to tell the Jackie Robinson story and not include details about racism in American society in the 1940s, you would not have told the Jackie Robinson story. Such details would not be needed in telling the Brooks Robinson story, but they are an essential element of what made Jackie Robinson, Jackie Robinson.

Similarly, if you were to try to explain to your grandchildren what happened when a Congresswoman was shot in Tucson, if you were to leave out the fact that she was a Jewish Democrat, you would not have told the whole story. If your grandchildren asked why that mattered, to have it make sense to them you would have to explain that Fox News' Glen Beck would hold mock assassinations of Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi, that former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin put crosshairs over a map of congressional candidates -- including Gifford, that Senatorial candidate Sharon Angle said that "Second Amendment remedies" might be needed to reverse policy defeats, and that Bill O'Reilly was leading a campaign to make sure that people said "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" to let Jews know that they are not real Americans. Without a discussion of this, the story is incomplete.

It is in this way that right-wing invective is a "small c" cause. No one is claiming that it is a "big C" cause ala Charles Manson, but the limitation of the discussion to "big C" causes -- which, of course, do not exist -- is the rhetorical trick that keeps us from discussing what is really happening. The pundits and politicians can deny any culpability by falsely limiting the scope of discussion, by hiding contributions to and by the larger environment by putting the effects of the environment completely behind a veil. It is a trick, one that we should not keep falling for...the stakes are too high, it is, as we see, a matter of life and death.

Why Is Romance Yucky?

The shorter of the short people has reached the point where romantic scenes in movies are yucky. It's not that they are uninteresting, boring, or taking up space that could be used for something more exciting, rather they elicit a visceral and often vocal negative response. He does not have this reaction to real-life emotions, for example, when I come home from work and embrace and trade I love you's with TheWife. Indeed, he himself is quite generous with affection for those he loves. He does not see girls as yucky, quite the opposite, he gets along very well with the little girls in his class and on his teams. But when it comes to romance on the screen, it clearly elicits a negative emotional reflex -- it is coming from him, not by him. This, of course, is not unique to him. Why do children, especially boys, go through this stage? What is it about the romantic images, something that seems nice, a part of a happy, fulfilled human life, that causes this reaction?

Happy Birthday Robert Wilson

Today is the 75th birthday of Robert Wilson, an accidental Nobel laureate in physics. In 1964, Wilson and his partner Arno Allen Penzias were working at Bell labs in New Jersey developing a new ultra-sensitive antenna that could measure small amounts of radio waves that would be bounced off of satellites. As anyone with a hearing aid will tell you, the problem with listening devices is that they hear everything around you, not just what you are trying to listen to. So, Penzias and Wilson spent a lot of time figuring out the possible sources of interference and filtering them out.

But then there was one source they could not figure out. It was a low hum that came from everywhere. It was the same frequency no matter where in the sky they pointed the antenna. They had cooled the instrument down to eliminate internal effects of heat, so that couldn't be it. But the noise was still there, yet seemed to have no definite source. They checked everything they could think of, but none of it accounted for the noise. Then they thought they found it. Pigeons had set up a nest in the antenna. They shoo-ed them out and cleaned up the droppings and figured that was that.

But it was still there. They had no sense of what it could be until a friend, hearing of their issues, told them about a paper he had read from a group headed by Robert Dicke, right down the road at Princeton, who argued that if the big bang theory was true -- something up in the air at the time -- then there ought to be a cosmic background radiation, in a sense, echoes of the bang resonating through all of space. Once Dicke and his team had realized that there was this strange effect which would seemingly show the likelihood of the big bang theory one way or the other, they set out to build an instrument sensitive enough to look for it.

When Penzias and Wilson read the paper, they finally figured out what their noise was. And for it they -- but not Dicke -- won the Nobel Prize for physics for providing the first clear evidence of the big bang theory, even though they were never looking for it.

Best Spoofs

My Fellow Comedists,

Last weekend, we showed the kids Airplane!. Then, taking the kids into school on Tuesday, the classical music station played Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours, which, of course, gave rise to a rousing chorus of "Hello Mudder, Hello Fadder" throughout the car. Then the less short of the short people comes home with word of "The Potter Puppet Players," a Harry Potter spoof with videos on YouTube. Three makes a pattern, so this weekend we ask about spoofs.

In any medium, spoofing anything, what are the best spoofs in history? Blazin' Saddles has to be mentioned right up front, of course, and then there's this one:
Others?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Band Names

Was reading a book awhile back and came across the phrase "Empedocles' cosmic love cycle" and thought "man, that would make a great band name." Always wanted a band myself called The Synthetic A Priori Blues Band. There's a folk duo on campus here at Gettysburg that occasionally performs at lunchtime as The Sibling Brothers, a name that delights me to no end.

Other band names that should exist or good ones we might not have heard of?

What's the Difference: Lying, Deceiving, and Misleading

What is the difference between lying, deceiving, and misleading? Are all cases of deception lies? Do you always have to mislead when deceiving? Can you mislead but not lie?

Those Who Can't Do Teach?

Ozzie Guillen who now manages the Chicago White Sox also played for them, having been the Rookie of the Year and named to the All Star Team three times. He bristles at the admiration given to Buck Showalter, now managing the Baltimore Orioles, who was never good enough to make the Major Leagues, something he shares with former Oriole manager and Hall of Famer Earl Weaver. It seems that to do well teaching someone to play major league baseball, and teaching is a part of coaching, one does not have to be able to have done it oneself.

How unusual is this? For most things in life do you have to be able to do something and do it well to teach others how to do it? We figure that the people to teach chemistry ought to be chemists, the people to teach anthropology ought to be anthropologists, the people to teach music ought to be musicians. Business management schools frequently crow about the way their faculty has real-life experience in he workplace. But is it any more true in these intellectual pursuits than it is in baseball? Is experience in what you are teaching necessary to be a good teacher? Is it helpful?

Moral Barometer

Happy New Year everyone. Seems as good a time as any to break out the old moral barometer. For the upcoming year, what are the most pressing ethical issues we need to consider as a nation and as a planet?