Zoos and Moral Responsibility

An interesting question from Lee:

I posted a link to a diary on DailyKos asking people to petition Mayor Bloomberg to maintain funding to the Bronx Zoo. I included a link where one could donate to the zoo itself. A friend replied, somewhat facetiously, asking why one should give money to a charity to help animals when there are countless humans that need help?

A corollary to this would be people who question donating to a charity to end hunger in Africa and not in Appalachia?

This seems like a false choice and questionable logic but I am not quite able to evince why.

There are three separate, but all very interesting questions here.

First, How do we divide up our charitable help? Do we do it serial or parallel? Do we triage the needs of the planet, focus solely on the worst with all of our resources and work our way through a prioritized list? Do we weight causes based on urgency or need and divide up resources accordingly? Do we seek out those which we may have the greatest effect upon or those which are the most grave? Do we have more obligation to those like ourselves or who live in the same community or country, or of the same species?

Second, do we have special obligations to zoos? We created them. We have placed animals in them that cannot be returned to their native habitats. Do we not then have special obligations to maintain them and create environments that are maximally satisfying for those trapped in them? Do these obligations override others that , all other things being equal, we might place ahead of them? Is there a sort of social contract that we have entered into with the animals by removing them from their natural state for our own amusement? Does the fact that they are "mere animals" limit our obligations?

Third, suppose we have moral problems with zoos. This is an open an interesting question, but let us assume for the sake of argument that we find zoos ethically problematic, do we still need to elevate their status in distributing resources? Can we inherit moral obligations with which we have moral concern, yet still inherit the obligation?

Self-Reference, I Said

A few years back, LilBro gave me a shirt he embroidered with the sentence, "There's something inherently funny about self-reference" above the pocket. I love that shirt, not only because it is true, but because I said it and having a self-referential claim about self-reference is inherently funny.

Then, last week I had reason to say, "Aristotle wrote the first seminal work on male reproduction." It is a sentence I adore. It made me think of the Moxy Fruvous song "King of Spain" which includes the wonderful phrase "a palatial palace."

So, what is your favorite example of self-reference? He worked judiciously during his years on the federal bench. They searched blindly for the cause of macular degeneration. She leafed through a volume on botany. Others?

Passing the Plate: May Day Edition

Friends,

I just finished my big gig in Lake Charles. I'll discuss it next weekend, but this weekend, yours truly needs some help. I'll be traveling tomorrow, so we'll be passing the plate.

In honor of May Day, it'll be worker jokes. They could involve any sort of occupation, but at least one must be mentioned. Here's my contribution: "A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist are sitting in a street cafe watching people going in and coming out of the house on the other side of the street. First they see two people going into the house. Time passes. After a while they notice three persons coming out of the house. The physicist says, "One of the two measurements wasn't very accurate." The biologist replies "They have reproduced".
The mathematician looks up and says, "If now exactly one person enters the house then it will be empty again."

Dig deep, people.

Live, love, and laugh.

Irreverend Steve

Language, Gender, and the Many

Wonderful questions this time around, folks. Thank you very much. Two good ones for today.

Anne asks,

"In Nigeria and parts of Cameroon, pidgin english only uses one gender to describe everyone. Men and women are both given the word man along with all associated he, him, his,... words. How do you think this lack of linguistic gender distinction changes the English language and gender issues regionally? Could this someday effect English and/or gender on a larger scale?"

There's been a lot of work done since the mid-70s on gender and language. The central insight comes from Nietzsche's work on ethics in which one of the benefits of power is the ability to define words. The meanings of words then reinforce the power structure by bringing with them connotations that presuppose the mythology of those in power. When a new group overthrows the old order, they redefine the words but traces of the old concepts remain.

This then became the jumping off point for the political correctness movement which hoped that by changing terms from those tainted by the oppressive past to shiny, new sterile words and phrases that we could affect social change. But this seems to put the linguistic cart before the social horse. Just as the standard use of the n-word within the African American community was an unsuccessful attempt led by Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor to strip the painful slur of its power, my guess is that adopting a gender-free language, or at least a language in which gender divisions are not explicitly made, would not have an effect on the place of women. Pure speculation, but my intuition is that while cultural biases are evident in the community's language, it is more effect than cause and changing the languge would not be a major cultural force.

C.Ewing asks

"What kind of problem is the problem of the many? Is it actually a psuedo-problem? Can we solve the linguistic vagueness simply by fiat and be done with it? Does this assist metaphysically? Should it be the subject of metaphysical analysis? Why or why not?"

The problem of the many is a question of individual identity. Given that things are made up of parts that are recognized as things themselves, how do we draw the line between things and collecitons? Humans are neighborhoods, including many, many little organisms that all help out the system as a whole run. Does the existence of beneficial bacteria in your gut that feed off of your system, but clearly are independent individuals and not organs of your body, mean you are not an individual?

This certainly is not a pseudo-problem as it pops up in menaingful ways in, for example, the philosophy of biology (what is a species?) and business ethics (is a corporation a moral agent in itself or just a collection of moral agents). We speak of sports teams as things. "I am an Oriole fan" is (sadly) meaningful even though there may be no common parts between the 1954 team and the 2008 team. "The Baltimore Orioles" seems to refer to something, not some collection of things. Similarly, an ecosystem.

In some cases it may be merely semantic, in other cases it is a metaphysical question. Is vagueness a piece of the solution? In some cases maybe, but I don't think it is the go-to move here. I would prefer something more functionalist -- do we consider it something that does something. Yes, the cloud is made up of water droplets, but can I meaningfully hold that the cloud dumps rain on my parade, the corporation files suit against me, the species is endangered. If it does something, it is something. This is not to say that the parts don't contribute, but if we can attribute action or intention to the collective, then that collective seems also to be an individual.

Einstein, Marky Mark, Write-Offs

I cannot say for sure, but I would be surprised if there are other posts that discuss accounting rules, Einstein, and Mark Wahlberg. Welcome to the Playground.

YKW asks,

"What would Einstein say about the scientific viability of mark-to-market accounting for the value of illiquid securities?"

The best place to look is his speech in 1921 to the Prussian Academy of Sciences where he discusses linguistic conventions.

Let us for a moment consider from this point of view any axiom of geometry, for instance, the following: through two points in space there always passes one and only one straight line. How is this axiom to be interpreted in the older sense and in the more modern sense?

The older interpretation: everyone knows what a straight line is, and what a point is. Whether this knowledge springs from an ability of the human mind or from experience, from some cooperation of the two or from some other source, is not for the mathematician to decide. He leaves the question to the philosopher. Being based upon this knowledge, which precedes all mathematics, the axiom stated above is, like all other axioms, self-evident, that is, it is the expression of a part of this a priori knowledge.

The more modern interpretation: geometry treats of objects, which are denoted by the words straight line, point, etc. No knowledge or intuition of these objects is assumed but only the validity of the axioms, such as the one stated above, which are to be taken in a purely formal sense, i.e., as void of all content of intuition or experience. These axioms are free creations of the human mind. All other propositions of geometry are logical inferences from the axioms (which are to be taken in the nominalistic sense only). The axioms define the objects of which geometry treats. Schlick in his book on epistemology has therefore characterized axioms very aptly as "implicit definitions."

Here, he is arguing that certain aspects of mathematics are freely chosen linguistic conventions and this is also the case in terms of accounting rules. The tax code, like Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, is a set of basic rules that are freely determined. Once they are in place, there are facts of the world about who owes what, who has paid what, and who has violated the law and should go to prison. But we are always free to alter those rules and that will mean a reinterpretation of empirical data.

Of course, you might also want to check out his essay "Why Socialism?" from 1949 in order to see what he thinks about our ability to make the changes that would benefit humanity:

"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."

Philo asks,

"What would Marky Mark say about the scientific viability of mark-to-market accounting for the value of illiquid securities?"

Deductions, good like Sunkist
Many wanna know who done this
Marky Mark and I'm here to move you
Write downs that will groove you
Balance sheet, I will improve you
That we can debit on the positive side
And truly amoratize
Default swaps took you on a ride
Accounting is my occupation
So feel my inflation

God and Stuff

A couple of God questions this week.

kzndr asks,

"Are any of the classical arguments for the existence of God actually any good?"

No.

The interesting one, though, is Anselm's argument that a perfect being must exist because existence is a perfection and God by definition is all-perfect. In its standard form, as Kant pointed out, it confuses existence (a precondition for having properties) with a property. One doesn't have or not have the property of existence, if one exists, then one may have properties (especailly if playing Monopoly).

There are, however, some strengths of modal logical language in which one can derive as a logical truth that God must necessarily exist. It requires what logic geeks call a language of strength S5 in which the fact that some sentence p might be true means that it must be the case that it is necessarily the case that p is possible. Is this the case? It is an axiom that we can assume or not so it is possible that the possible necessity of God means that it is necessarily true that God necessarily exists.

The possibility of a modal logic discussion, necessarily brings out Hanno. He asks,

"Is Quantum Mechanics incompatible with an omniscient God?"

The correct answer, of course, is a superposition of yes and no.

The problem is with the so-called measurement problem. When a system is unobserved its natural state is one of a superposition of all possible states. Take spin which is easy because it has two values -- up and down -- making it like a quantum coin flip. When we do not measure the spin of a particle, it will be in a superposed state of up and down. The Schrodinger equation, the fundamental rule of quantum mechanics, talks about how this superposition evolves over time. And it does. This is completely deterministic; nothing random. It's just like Newton's laws.

But the weird thing is that we never ever see anything in its superposed state. The instant we observe, the system collapses into one of its possible property states and we see it there. In our example, it becomes either spin up or spin down. But here is the wierd part, we don't...indeed, can't...know which state it will fall into. THAT is where the randomness of quantum mechanics shows up. There are no hidden variables that we just haven't found yet that will tell us ahead of time and we know from experiments that it really is in this superposed state of multiple possible observable states because we can get it to do things like interfere with itself.

So, now we come to God. We have a particle whose spin we have not yet, but are about to measure. It will be spin up or down, but isn't either yet. Can God know which it will be? No. But the question is whether this is a challenge to omniscience. One the one hand, the genuine randomness does seem to challenge the idea that God knows all facts at any time, but one could also argue that there simply isn't a fact to be known until the measurement, so God's omniscience is saved.

MASH and the Marx Brothers

A pair of favorite questions.

Gwydion asks,

"Which is your favorite episode of M*A*S*H and why?"

Dear Sigmund. I loved the character of Sydney Freedman, the psychiatrist who was an occasional character. On the one hand, it was introspective and thoughtful, speaking the truth that was generally pointed to by the show. But it was also funny, it was one of the practical joke episodes and those were always my favorites.

Hanno asks,

"What is the funniest scene in the Marx Brothers, and post the clip..."

This is toughie and Hanno and I have been batting it back and forth for a couple days now. It is hard not to go with the obvious -- the mirror scene from Animal Crackers, and then there is the best Groucho scene (either the introduction of Captain Spaulding or his conversation with Rosce W. Chandler), the best Chico scene (in Tarrantino's office in Duck Soup), the best Harpo scene (the lemonade stand in Animal Crackers or the end of A Night at the Opera), and the best Zeppo scene (Jamison, take a letter). But the funniest Marx brothers scene would be when they pretend to be the aviators in A Night at the Opera. Unfortunately, there isn't a complete clip on YouTube that getsChico's speech and Groucho's comments.

The Clap and the Flu

B. Smith asks

"Why is clapping the standard gesture of approval at the end of any kind of performance? Where did this act of taking one hand and hitting it against another to make a clicking sound quickly and repeatedly originate?"

Clapping is something that has surely been with humans since before recorded history. It is a way to make a loud noise with minimal expense of energy and no chance of injury. We know that ancient Egyptian and Greek music included clapping, but the first records we have of clapping as applause for performances is from the Roman era. It is something all can do, it is anonymous (everyone's claps sound basically alike), and it is an means of expression that can vary in enthusiasm reflecting the level of approval making it simple and so it has become standard.

Gwydion asks,

"How worried should we all be about the new strain of swine flu? Me, I have a generic fear (or is it an expectation?) that in short order some new strain of flu will ravage the world... but what about this one?"

The answer is -- not sure. Influenza is something that is both common and extremely dangerous. Most years, we deal with a strain that is just a small genetic deviation from the previous year's version. Epidemiologists figure out (take an educated guess) as to which of those in the environment is going to be the most prevalent and develop a flu shot that folks -- especially the old, young, and immuno-compromised -- should take. Pandemics like that of 1918 can be incredibly destructive.

The swine flu, coming from infected pigs is different. It is a strain unlike any we've ever seen. It has pieces of the human flu, old swine flu strains, and avian flu. In addition, it has shown itself to be resistant to our two oldest and most tested remedies. Most alarming, it seems to hit those in the 18-40 range the hardest -- those whose defenses are usually the strongest.

The bright side is that we have a worldwide public health network that is monitoring it closely. There have been deaths in Mexico and a few sporadic cases in Texas, California, Arizona, and Kansas (a lot of Mexican immigrants work in meat packing plants there). A close eye was kept on bird flu and SARS a few years back was successfully contained. So, we are not in the place we were in 1918. That said, it is something to keep a wary eye upon.

Auto Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics: Any Questions?

Been a while since we've done this, so let's go.

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

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

Why Do You Know That?

Let's pull this one back out. It's the converse of "auto mechanics to quantum mechanics," where the idea now is to contribute those bits of knowledge that seem really cool even if they are not directly applicable to anything.

My contribution:

Stan Freberg's son was the original voice of Linus on the Peanuts television specials.

Benjamin Franklin was an expert swimmer and invented an early version of flippers. He is the earliest American inducted into a sporting Hall of Fame having been inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

Jim Brown, one of the greatest running backs to ever play football, is not only in the Professional Football Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame, but also in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame for his career at Syracuse.

Your contribution? What do you know and why do you know it?

The Complexity of Evil

With Hitler's birthday, the trials of former Khmer Rouge gaurds, the David Brooks article on "The End of Philosophy," and a brutal, horrible, violent crime on campus in the last few weeks, I've been thinking about evil lately. When I was in graduate school, I was a teaching assistant for Stephen Barker who while teaching the ethics portion of an intro class, found the students hesitant about retribution. I will never forget his New England Brahman accent asking the lecture hall, "Have we really come to place where we no longer wish vengeance upon the evil?"

Hannah Arendt, of course, wrote very powerfully about the banality of evil, that is, the ways in which evil can be spread out and compartmentalized so that those perpetrating even the most egregious crimes can see themselves with clean hands, as just doing their jobs. The ways in which evil can become invisible and part of the structure ought to concern us. It allows us to deny our responsibility to others, that we are what we are a part of. We see that in the current discussion around torture and culpability at different levels of the chain of command. Who ought to be considered responsible?

But perhaps equally important is the way we view evil since Freud. The psychoanalytic approach has deeply shaped the ways in which we think of evil. With the possibility that our minds work apart from our conscious desires and that there may be dark and nefarious urges below the surface that are expressed in ways that are quite different from the person we try to choose to be is truly frightening. There is not a horror film nowadays where there is not a Freudian account of some childhood happening that caused the antagonist to become the monster he is.

And so we are left with a bipolar view of evil which I saw haunting the friends of the young man who committed the heinous act here. We can make pure angels of victims, some rightly as in this case, but we can no longer make pure devils of aggressors. Surely, he wasn't a monster, but yet he was the person who committed the monstrous act. He had stopped taking his antidepressants, but while that may be an explanatory factor, is an explanation the same as an excuse? How do we assign blame and shame when we also have to account for psychological and sociological factors that condition our minds and behaviors? When the motivation for our acts becomes murky and complex, how do we make sense of that we want to cast in black and white?

Bullshit or Not: Hitler Edition

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

Last weekend was Adolph Hitler's birthday, so let's take a passage from Mein Kampf,

"To take abstract and general principles, derived from a philosophy which is based on a solid foundation of truth, and transform them into a militant community whose members have the same political faith – a community which is precisely defined, rigidly organized, of one mind and one will – such a transformation is the most important task of all; for the possibility of successfully carrying out the idea is dependent on the successful fulfilment of that task. Out of the army of millions who feel the truth of these ideas, and even may understand them to some extent, one man must arise. This man must have the gift of being able to expound general ideas in a clear and definite form, and, from the world of vague ideas shimmering before the minds of the masses, he must formulate principles that will be as clear-cut and firm as granite. He must fight for these principles as the only true ones, until a solid rock of common faith and common will emerges above the troubled waves of vagrant ideas."

If we want to turn ideals and ideologies of any stripe into material reality, does this require the arising of a statesman as the face of the movement? Is the great individual a necessary condition for social change of any kind?

Bullshit or not? You decide. As usual, feel free to leave anything from a single word to a dissertation.

"This Isn't an Argument." "Yes it is."

This is the 1000th post on Philosophers' Playground. That's a lot of conversations. So, to celebrate, let's discuss the functionality of discussion.

We had our annual "Get Acquainted Day" at the college last weekend where incoming and undecided students are invited to campus for a day of events including meet and greets with department faculty. We were struck by several students who said that what brought them to philosophy was that they loved to argue. This led to a conversation amongst us over the nature of this love. Did it reduce philosophy to mere sport? Was this a manifestation of competition in which the need to win would blind these young people to insights from those they chose to disagree with? Or could this be seen as a desire to break loose of the intellectual bonds of high school in which they were never to challenge the authority of their teachers, a desire to stretch their own wings and become intellectuals instead of passive learners? Is it an urge to become participants in meaningful discourse or to become obnoxious sophists?

So, the question for us then is the value of debate. In philosophy classes and on this blog, are we training people to be mindlessly, if not effectively, contrary like John Cleese's character in argument clinic or is it more like those baby tigers you see wrestling on nature programs who are practicing and training to engage well when they get into actual situations of conflict in the real world? Is there an intrinsic worth to adversarial discourse like we have here or is it just a meaningless pastime?

4-20: What Is a Drug and How Ought We Deal with Them?

One of the comics last night had a great line. He said a friend told him that doing drugs would catch up with him, so he decided to start doing speed. 4-20 seems as good a time as any to think about drug policy.

We draw a distinction on the one hand between substances like alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, and marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Caught in the middle are prescription drugs like ritalin that are used medicinally and recreationally. What exactly is a drug? The notion of a substance that changes bodily chemistry is surely too broad since all food does that. "Creates an abnormal state of the body" will get you bogged down in the loaded notion of normal -- athletes carbo-load, but surely spaghetti isn't a drug. If that doesn't deter you, antibiotics are drugs but they restore a normal equilibrium. Is there a way to draw this line? Is it meaningful or problematic if it remains blurry?

Once we have the in/out line determined, how ought we think of these substances? The libertarian line leaves the individual entirely in charge of what s/he chooses to put into his/her body. The utilitarian line looks at the consequences which in some cases is extreemly harmful to both the indiviual and the community, in others less so. This line, of course, does not coincide with our legal/illegal line at all. How should we draw that line? What is the difference between alcohol and, say, marijuana that justifies prohibition on one and not the other? Should they both be prohibited? Both legal? Is there a difference between these and "harder" substances and what is the strongest argument for prohibiting/legalizing any of them?

Is Comedy Like Music?

Friends,

This weekend we have a theological questions for all you thoughtful Comedists. I was listening to an interview with Ron White and the interviewer framed the question in terms of the Allman Brothers, whom White and the interviewer were both fans of. When you go to see an Allman's show (and they put on great shows), you want to hear Statesboro Blues, Ramblin' Man, and the other hits during the show.

Yet, White always tours with completely new material, even if he admits openly that his first album was his best stuff so far. His argument is that comedy is not like music. Hearing a joke you loved the first time again is a completely different experience from hearing a song you loved the first time again. He says that if he were to start "Tater Salad" at a show on this tour, it would get applause for the first 30 seconds, but because it is an eight minute bit, folks would have to sit through seven and a half minutes of stuff that won't be funny in the same way anymore. Comedy has a different shelf-life than music, they are just different art forms.

There is certainly something to this. For a joke to work, you need to be blindsided by the punchline. Knowing what is coming does to some degree kill the joke. Yet, there are bits that we can all listen to over and over again. They are comedicmasterpieces that are funny every time you hear them.

So, is White right? Is comedy like music or not?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Pity Party

Quick note: I will be playing HighTops in Timonium Sunday night. It's a new venue for comedy and supposed to be a very nice room, so support is greatly appreciated. It's a free show with some quite good comics on the bill, so I can guarantee some laughs and I'll be doing new material, so please come out if you can.

It's been a while since we've had a pity party, so let's go at it.

I feel sorry for Mel Gibson. His wife of 28 years is divorcing this wonderful, kind, upstanding, anti-Semitic, piece of garbage who called a female police officer "Sugartits." The irony would be if she had a Jewish lawyer.

I feel sorry for George Will. Long considered the heir to William F. Buckley as the primary voice of reason and elitist intellect on the right, his period of dotage has arrived. Sure, it was bad to write a misinformed piece denying global warming, and then follow it up with more denials of global warming in which the researchers whose data he was interpreting publicly said that he had misunderstood their work. But now, this piece is just plain sad. He is railing against the wearing of blue jeans. "Those kids today in their dungarees..." I think we've finally reached that point where mom and dad have no choice but to agree to move gramps into an assisted living facility here, we just can't care for George Will at home anymore.

I feel sorry for Norm Coleman. Not only did he lose, but now he reminds me of Michael Schaivo. His beloved bid to keep his Senate seat has been dead for months and everyone knows it, but it has been kept on artificial life support by right-wingers for nothing but temporary and shallow political gain. Let it die with dignity, please.

So, who do you feel sorry for?

Fairy Sex

Is the Tooth Fairy male or female? What about the Easter Bunny?

Ain't No Time to Hate: Safe Spaces for Freaks

Last night's Dead show (wild second set -- Space->Dark Star->King Solomon's Marbles->Drums->Come Together->Dark Star) reminded me of what got me there in the first place. I got on the bus in the Reagan 80s, a sensitive kid who felty that there had to be a more kind and thoughtful way of being together in the world. At my first shows, I saw not only a carnival, but a living social laboratory running thousands of simultaneous experiiments in alternative living. It was the first time, I did not feel like a freak, completely out of place. I think academia is another safe space for eccentrics, although that may be less and less true.

The question is where else do those safe spaces for people out of step with the mainstream exist?

Bullshit or Not: Thomas Jefferson Edition

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

In honor of Thomas Jefferson's birthday yesterday, let's play with a quotation from this Founding Father,

"There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, 1796. ME 9:354

So, does everyone owe a debt of service to his or her country and community? If so, is it like a progressive tax increasing with one's bounties or do we all have the same obligation to give back? Why should your reward for hard work give you an increased obligation? What forms could this service take? do accidental services count, for example, one often hears the argument for regressive tax breaks in the form of an argument that the wealthy create more jobs and therefore simply by being rich and doing what rich people do, they are doing their part.

As usual, feel free to leave anything from a single word to a dissertation. So, TJ, bullshit or not?

Happy Birthday Ken Nordine

I was in college when I found the work of Ken Nordine. That voice, that voice, those words, flowing, growing, pedals in your mind melding common images of daily life with a quick pun that tangentially shifts, ships passing in the mind, not that he would ever mind. Quick, colorful, playful, absurd, and smart, he combines music with words, abstract creations of consciousness that bathe you in warmth.

You've heard his voice on a thousand commercials or the radio if you are a Blackhawks fan. His voice, deep and subtle, kind yet heavy, is unique. But he is more than pipes, he is a wordsmith in his own right and in the 50s began performing his Word Jazz with the likes of Chico Hamilton and Zoot Sims. Twenty albums later, he continues on abated with contemporary musicians including his son. The quality of his work has never wavered (I all but wore out Devout Catalyst). As if the good people of Chicago didn't horde enough culture, they are treated to his weekly radio show.

But stingy he isn't. His website is wonderful and there is many a piece set to visuals by his people on Youtube. Here are a couple to whet your appetite:



Happy birthday Ken Nordine and thanks for all the joy.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye...Happy Keister

Friends,

It's that time again. As our Christian friends and neighbors celebrate their holy day of Easter, we Comedists celebrate Keister, our holiday in honor of the moon. Of all the parts of the human anatomy, none is more inherently funny than the backside, the gluteus maximus, the heinie. We see it in the references: you can be the butt of a joke, one who makes jokes is a smart ass.

What is it about the tush that is so funny? Why does mooning get laughs that exposing any other part of the body does not? Is it the shape? Puffy, fleshy, and round with a vertical crack. It does look kind of silly. If the body is a temple, the butt is like hanging a black velvet dogs playing poker over the alter.

Is it that it is associated with the passing of gas. Farts are funny on a number of sensory levels, the sound, the smell -- consider the classic beans scene from Blazing Saddles. The butt is the spatial representation of the floating air biscuit.



Could it be that it is always covered, a forbidden part that is shocking when made public. Backsides are only funny because they are something we don't usually see.

Or is it a combination of the two: because the tuchus is on the flip side of the more regal genitalia, it is treated with the same nobility, while all the time being the source of flatulence and fecal matter, amongst the least majestic of bodily functions. Is the humorous nature of the rear end to be found in this incongruous juxtaposition?

I leave you with a couple of jokes on the backside:

Did you hear about the woman who backed into an airplane propeller? Disaster.

What do you get if you sit on a waffle iron? Hot crossed buns.

Your momma's butt is so big that she gets taller when she sits down.


Any others, my friends?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

David Brooks: Philosophical Mohel

So David Brooks has been getting a lot of well deserved flack for his latest column in the New York Times proclaiming the end of philosophy (see, e.g. JCasey, Helmut and Hilzoy)

David Brooks has discovered social psychology. When making moral judgments, we do not deliberate but act in accord with emotional reactions that are almost immediately summoned by situations. This, to Brooks is news and spells the end of philosophy, or at least ethics. All of the real philosophers out there, after sighing and rolling their eyes, try to explain that sentiment has been a part of the discussion surrounding ethical theory since at least Hume and aestethic/ethical sensibilities since Aristotle. They then set out the fact/value distinction in which simply because we DO tend to act in a certain way does not meant we OUGHT to act in that way and that rational thought can help us condition ourselves to act better. Follow the links for this argument made well, so I will work through it no further.

What I want to comment upon is the fact that Brooks thinks this is a novel insight. I think he is being honest here because one of the hallmarks of contemporary conservatism is a blindness to social science. As I've discussed before, the central axiom of Reaganism, "personal responsibility" is really an attempt to say that sociology does not exist. There are no social factors at work influencing us one way or another. If I am wealthy, it is because I am virtuous, not because there were certain factors at work that put a wind in my social sail. And anyone who is poor is by definition lazy and undeserving of help, we cannot look at all to social factors to explain why certain groups are where they are.

Such an explanation, if cogent, would imply that different policies would affect the structure and help people. If we can help, then we ought to. So, simply deny the existence of psychology and sociology (unless you have Charles Murray who cooks the books to say it wouldn't help anyway). It is, in large part, a reaction against Marxism which places too much emphasis on the effect of the structure, as a neo-Hegelian would, downplaying the role of the individual; something the classical liberal perspective that is the root of American conservatism will not tolerate.

But I see worth in Brooks' column. It is an important development in the fracturing of the 20th century conservative movement. Yes, Brooks draws the wrong conclusion from what is interesting research (read Cass Sunstein's book Infotopia, if you want a good discussion about social psychological results and their effects on models of deliberation -- there are problems with his discussion, but not trivial ones), but he is a conservative who is just starting to wrestle with the complexities that those of us on the left have been thinking about for about a century and a half. How do you account for the effects of our individual wiring and the large scale, largely ossified structure of society and find ways to affect positive moral change? It is not only a hard question, in some sense it is THE hard question. It is the question that gives birth to modern ethics. The end of philosophy? No, my dear Brooksy, it is the birth of it. By trying to cut it short right after its birth, perhaps we ought to think of David Brooks as the philosophical mohel.

Cultural Relativism

Today is my birthday and that of Tom Lehrer. One of my favorite songs of his is "In Old Mexico" where he sings of a visit to that country. At one point in the narrative, he is waxing poet about a visit to a bullfight in the style of Hemingway, only with that classic Lehrer snark.

"I hadn't had so much fun since the day my brother's dog Rover got run over.

Rover was killed by a Pontiac and and it was done with such artistry and grace that the witnesses awarded the driver both ears and the tail."

He clearly calling something that is a part of Mexican culture cruel and barbaric.

Cultural relativists look at such proclamations as intolerant. Cultures have lenses and trying to make sense of another culture through your own lens will fail to give its rituals and practices full meaning. Any judgment rendered would then be ill-informed. As such, we should not try to judge the practices of other cultures since there is no morally neutral standpoint to occupy.

At the same time, shouldn't morality by extra-cultural? Human rights seem not limited by national border or cultural region. Where is the line between respect for different ways of being and protection of the innocent?

Why Are Bad Words Bad?

So, apparently I am the Lenny Bruce of the Central Pennsylvania Planners Association. Certified planners -- city planners, zoning officials, land use managers -- have a mandated requirement for continuing education to remain in good standing and they must have an hour and a half of that continuing ed relate to ethics. Last year, the state-wide gathering was in Gettysburg and they asked if I could lead the ethics session. I agreed and it went well.

So, a few months ago I get an invite to speak again to the central regional group in Harrisburg. I agreed and went up yesterday and did my schtick. Afterward, I'm chatting with some of the planners who are on the organizing committee and they tell me that there was controversy around the invitation. The committee was split down the middle between those who found my stand-up comedian style refreshing given what these continuing ed seminars tend to be and those who were set against having me back because apparently last time I used a couple of four letter words during my lecture and they thought that some one who used bad words was not someone who had the credibility to talk about ethics. Of course, I use them as "flavoring particles" to shock, surprise, or get a laugh when I feel my audience slipping away, so they serve a purpose for me in the classroom. It is not gratuitous. But, needless to say, I am still chuckling about it.

And, of course, is re-raises the question, what is the meaning of "bad" in bad words? What makes profanity problematic? Is it a moral problem? Is it mere social etiquette? Are there contexts where it goes from a faux-pas to an unethical act? Is it a sign of disrespect? What is the nature of their naughtiness?

Team Building Exercise: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Let's try something new that might become a regular irregular if it works. It's based on the obnoxious corporate team-building exercises. It'll be a sort of trivia relay. The idea is that one can only provide incomplete answers and hints to what what knows but cannot say in order to try to ultimately get the complete answer.

Here's the challenge: We are to try to name as many actors as possible who appeared in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" -- the greatest ensemble comedy in history.

Here's the catch: No one person can name more than five.

Here's the cooperative team-building element: After exhausting your five, you may leave hints for others to help them name the names you know but cannot name. They must be good faith hints that do not give away the name.

Now, no google, no IMDB, no cheating. All from memory. There were 75 people who appeared in the film, about two dozen of which are well-known figures in the world of early to mid 20th century comedy -- some quite surprising. Let's see how many we get.

Ka-splash

Man, I want to play poker with Kim Jong Il. There is no advantage he won't blow. Launching a long-range missile gives him no more capital than threatening to do so. The mere threat gave him leverage with the international community to bargain for...well, it's not exactly clear what.

But instead of using his hole cards to draw in the other side and extract more Elvis movies, he lays them right out there on the table for everyone to see his two nine off suit. He launches it and what happens? The missile carrying the "communications satellite" ends up in the Pacific, another North Korean technological flop.

So now the big worry is that if they have successfully created nuclear warheads -- which of course, we do have reason to doubt they've done right -- we have to be concerned that in an act of aggression, he'll launch them and accidentally drop them on his own people...something he now only does metaphorically.

Sometimes you have to wonder if the villains from Rocky and Bullwinkle weren't just ahead of their time.

The Feast of Saint Tom

Friends,

I am humbled to share a birthday this week with a true Comedist saint, Tom Lehrer. An undergraduate and masters students at Harvard in mathematics in the late 40s and early 50s, he began to play novelty songs in the Cambridge area. Eventually, he spent $15 and made a record in 1953, "Songs by Tom Lehrer" -- recording all of the songs in one one hour session -- which he initially just sold around Harvard for $3.

He was a local underground success, with friends of friends at Harvard ordering copies from other universities until a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle got a copy and suddenly he was nationwide. He began to play shows in New York and sales began to pick up although major labels and radio refused him because of his controversial lyrics.

He joined the army for two years from '55-'57 -- a sure fire way to avoid the draft -- and after getting out he continued to write putting out another album in '59, "More Songs by Tom Lehrer."

The album was successful, he began touring which led to the live album "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer," and then realized that he hated playing the same thing every night and gave up the road the next year. In the mid-sixties, he wrote for the television program "That Was the Week That Was" and collected the songs onto one last album "That Was the Year That Was." In the 70s, he did some work with "The Electric Company," but for all intents and purposes, he gave up show business altogether, teaching the occasional course in math or musical theater at the University of California Santa Cruz when he feels like it.

Tom Lehrer was counterculture before there was a counterculture. He was a wordsmith and punster par excellence who was not afraid to be smart. Coming from the Cold War 50s when the powers that were were not all that bright, he lampooned with razor sharp insights and a wit to match. He was part of a movement with people like Stan Freberg who were clean cut, educated, intellectual, political and just plain funny.

Here's the classic "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and the ever-sharp "Werner von Braun."





Happy birthday Tom Lehrer and thanks.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Otto Neurath and the Credit Crisis

One of my heroes is Otto Neurath. He was a member of the Vienna Circle, a philosopher and a sociologist. He turned down an opportunity to work with Max Weber and instead went into museum work. His idea was to create science museums to start a social revolution.

The key to upward mobility in class-ossified Europe, he believed, was education. But working people could never have the time or instruction to master the complex mathematical language in which science was couched. This was a boundary like the writing of all academic papers in Latin. It gave those with the social capital a lock on education and therefore on social control.

But if we were to develop a new language, the whole thing could change. It would have to be a language accessible to all, but yet sufficiently robust to be able to convey the complex mathematical relations needed to explain science. And so he developed "Isotype" (International System of TYpographic Picture Education), a pictorial language useful for representing abstractions and relations. Ever look at the symbol on a bathroom door to see if it is the men's or ladies' room? Ever check to see if it's a little guy or a big hand to see if it is safe cross? That's Isotype.

But the idea was not mere convenience or safety, it was to have a language that could explain the complexities of the world to non-scientists in a way they could understand. That's why I was tickled to find Jonathan Jarvis' work "The Crisis of Credit." The use of isotype in a video that does exactly what Neurath was hoping isotype could do in a way that would have tickled Neurath is a marvel. Do yourself a favor and watch both parts.

Evil, Structure, and Personal Responsibility

Trials for crimes against humanity by former members of the leadership of the Khmer Rouge have begun and the first is one of the most notorious prison commanders who not only ordered but carried out torture. His defense, of course, is based around "I was just carrying out orders."

No doubt that knowingly carrying out immoral orders makes you a party to the immorality, but the question is whether the moral corruption of the system that generates the orders does provide some ethical subtleties that we don't generally consider.

Hannah Arendt, of course, brings out in the case of Eichmann how evil becomes normalized, banal, compartmentalized in such a way that one becomes shielded from the horror and can convince oneself that one is simply doing normal logistical bureaucratic tasks like any other. But this problem is different. This is having full view of the evil one has a hand in, but in a prisoner's dilemma type problem, one also has an understanding that if one does not engage in the evil activity and does so not only willingly, but enthusiastically, one's own self and family may or will likely becomes victims of that violence. In a culture based on fear of the authorities, the only safe place is on the inside; but being on the inside requires selling one's soul. The paranoia is legitimate. Authoritarian regimes make everyone so worried that they will rat on their neighbors to make themselves more patriotic by comparison and to make sure no one is turning on them. Joining with the evil makes pragmatic sense.

But is this pragmatism morally relevant? Are we morally obliged to subject ourselves and our innocent loved ones to torture and death in order to keep our hands clean? Is there some way that those who knowingly did wrong to protect themselves and their families are less culpable? Do the means of normal moral consideration apply to irregular circumstances like those of Cambodia under Pol Pot, Russia under Stalin, China under Mao, or Germany under Hitler?

Saint Shecky's Day Miracle and the Gospel According to Irreverend Steve

Friends,

On this, the holiest day of the comedist year, I come to tell of a true Saint Shecky's Day miracle, all praise to the Cosmic Comic, funny be He. Last week I did sin before the All-funny One. My son -- and I have no idea where he learned this -- asked me why women live longer than men and I did not reply with Alan King's line "because they aren't married to women." I thought it, but didn't deliver. I was ashamed.

I've been writing my backside off to have enough material for a full set at McNeese State University in a few weeks and had a new bit that I needed to roadtest. So, I thought I'd perform it this week at Allstars Comedy Club. Now, this was college material, explicitly not apprpriate for a club. Jokes like "Your mama's so stupid she thinks 'broccoli' is an adverb" and "What do you get if you cross Sophocles with James Bond? Oedipussy Rex." But I needed to work through the delivery and timing and so I knowing went up there well aware that I would die on stage. I was willing to die for my jokes, comedic martyrdom. In the pureness of my comidic heart, I was forgiven by the Cosmic Comic for my earlier transgression and as I walked on stage I looked down to see a miraculous event, a table of no fewer than twelve college students from James Madison materialized right up front. They were smart, they had had a few drinks, and they laughed at what was probably the nerdiest set ever delivered from that stage. On Saint Shecky's Day eve, my set was saved by an act of Comic Divine Intervention. I write this humbled by his mercy and his humor.

In his honor, let me recount how our new religion came to be:

It all came to me when I was teaching a class in the philosophy of religion at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. We were discussing Anselm’s argument for the existence of God, which contends that an all-perfect being has to exist. The notion of perfection was to take all good qualities and extend them to an infinite degree. And then I realized, hey a sense of humor is a good thing, right? If you were trapped on a deserted island with someone, would you prefer someone who could make you laugh? Of course, but if you look at any of the standard Holy Books, and Sacred Scripture, there are no jokes. There’s no “‘Knocketh, knocketh,’ sayeth the Lord. And the angel did reply, ‘Who is there?’ And the Lord did say, ‘I am the Lord thy God.’ And the angel did say, ‘I am the Lord thy God who?’ And the Lord did quip, ‘I told you not to take my name in vain…ahh, got you again.’ And the Lord never grew tired of that joke. And the angels did roll their eyes.” Nothing like that. I mean if this God is supposed to be all-perfect, then he’d not only be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, he’d also be all-funny. But no.

At the same time, I realized that if you want to go anywhere today in the religion industry, you need to either be Mother Teresa or Pat Robertson and neither one of those were attractive career options to me. But there is a quick and easy way and the key is get in early. Look at Judaism. Among the greats is Abraham. Why? It’s not that he was so wonderful. Gets to Egypt and starts pimping out his wife to the Egyptian army, says she’s his sister. But he’s sitting at God’s right hand, why? He got in early. The disciples? Couldn’t agree on anything. But automatic sainthood. Why? Got in early.

It all came together one day when I was teaching a night school class in ethics at a community college. We were discussing the difference between ethical precepts and social mores. And one of the students asked, “Steve, what are mores?” And I said, “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.” Bathed in the groans of pain from my students I knew I was in the presence of the Divine. Set-ups that perfect could not just randomly happen. That was an act of Humorous Intervention. I had been tested by the Cosmic Comic.

So, I realized that this is what I had to do. I needed to start my own religion, one based upon comedy. The basic structure is like the Judeo-Christian ideas. Life is a test and when you die your souls goes up and there’s the Pearly Gates and behind them is Saint Shecky with a big book. You see, there are a certain number of set-ups that you get and for those whose punchlines you deliver, like the classroom example, you get one in the good column.

But then there are those you miss. When I was in grad school. I was out taking a walk and as I walked up a hill, there was a couple coming down. They both looked at me strangely and the guy says to me, “Didn’t we just see you with a dog?” I said, “I’m sorry, you must have me confused for somebody else.” As I watched them walk away, I realized that the correct answer was “Excuse me, that was my wife.” I blew it.

Saint Shecky keeps the tally and if you make more than you miss, you are invited in to sit at the right hand of Groucho. If you miss more than you make, you go to comedy hell where it is hot, all drinks are in dribble glasses, every seat has a whoopee cushion, and you are forced to watch reruns of Three’s Company for all of eternity.

Happy Saint Shecky's Day everyone!

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Springtime in Detroit?

So, GM CEO Rick Wagoner was ousted by Obama as a first step towards possibly saving the US's largest auto maker. To start, get the captain away from the bridge of the Exxon Valdez...(hey, it's a hackneyed metaphor that didn't mention the Titanic!)

Is Detroit salvageable? There is a problem endemic to the industry. I think of a story that Ralph Nader tells about his battles with them in the 60s. While fighting the war to include seatbelts (which the auto industry did everything in its power to avoid), he set his aim lower. A simple problem. The latches on car doors were designed badly so that in accidents the doors would fly open and passengers would get thrown from the car causing much greater harm. The solution was a redesign that would be a reworking of the same material, it would not cost a penny more to do it better. It would not cause any supplier to have to raise a price. It was a simple little change that would have no effect on the industry, but would save many lives. And the industry fought tooth and nail to stop it just because they didn't want to be told anything.

This attitude is still there. They destroy electric cars. They scoffed at building anything but Escalades, Explorers, Corvettes, and other prostetic gentilia with wheels. High school never ends. The people who populate these big corporations are the towel snapping jerks we all remember only the locker room is now the board room. Will removing one really change anything? Is the entire structure contaminated? Can the auto industry really change in the ways it would save it?

Aldo Leopold writes of farmers plowing under windbreaks to plant a few more rows just five years after they watched most of their nieghbors driven from their family farms by the winds of the dust bowl. Is this goingto be the same thing?

Etiquette and Ethics

Been thinking of the line between social mores and morality. Had another funeral this weekend. A not-so-old deadhead friend passed away from cancer and the conversation amongst a bunch of us was whether to wear tie-dye to the service. On the one hand, there's no doubt that Andy would have smiled at the sight, it would have been done out of love, and would have been meaningful for many who did. But the concern was for the family. He was one thing to us, but like all people he was multi-faceted. Would the tribute seem to trivialize the occassion? It certainly would have been counter to etiquette, but would it have crossed the ethical line into disrespect? Surely, not every act that violates norms is wrong. There is nothing immoral about using the wrong fork. But is there a line at which a breach of etiqueete becomes more than a question of manners? If so, where is that line?

Feast of Saint Marcel

Friends,

This week saw the 86th anniversary of the birth of Marcel Marceau. His real name was Mangel and he came from a Jewish family. He fell in love with Charlie Chaplin's work and would perform his versions of Chaplin's clowning acts for neighborhood children.

He took the name Marceau to hide his Jewish identity, something that would be necessary with the coming of World War II. He moved to Paris, which was safer and there he began studying mime with Etienne Decroux the father of modern mime.

When the war did come, the results were tragic, his father perished in Auschwitz. Marceau and his brother joined the French resistance and worked to help Jewish children avoid the concentration camps. After the war, he joined the French army.

He returned to his studies in 1946 and the following year introduced his famous character Bip which vaulted him to international stardom. Happy Birthday, Marcel Marceau.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Happy Birthday, Quentin Tarantino

It's Quentin Tarantino's 46th birthday today. I do think he will be viewed as one of the essential American filmmakers of this generation. His trademark schitck, of course, is the juxtaposition of horribly gruesome violence captured in a way that makes it cutesy. He does for blood and gore what Betty Boop did for sex in the '30s.

He is someone who clearly loves the history of cinema and quotes from multiple periods in his films. You see influences from everywhere, concepts taken from Hitchcock to 60s blacksploitation to japanese martial arts. He has a broad palette, but never uses it in a fashion that is ostentatious or that strays from his own voice.

Most of all, what I admire about him is that he is a master at non-linear narrative. The stories he tells have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but they rarely appear in that order. He is able to jump from time to time and although you know how it ends, you are still on the edge of your seat not sure how you got from now to that, even though you've already seen some of what happens in the middle.

So, happy birthday. What are your favorite Tarantino films?

Happy Birthday Gloria Steinem

Yesterday was Gloria Steinem's 75th birthday. A wonderful event and an appropriate time to consider the state of gender equality and gender roles in our society.

Domestic violence has been all over the headlines lately. The pay gap for women still exists. Indeed, it becomes evident the first year out of college which belies the usual "women more often choose to stay home" line. From that first year, it just widens.

Yet, the academic achievement of women continues to distance them from their male counterparts (high school and college graduation rates are higher for women) and this is having real effects in terms of representation in traditionally male dominated fields. The number of new doctors and lawyers, for example, is very near parity (although the number of female partners in firms is still significantly lower).

So, what are the greatest strides forward in terms of eliminating patriarchal barriers and what are the most important gender-based hurdles remaining?

Mind/Brain

Taught my middle school class yesterday and the kids went bananas over the mind/body problem. So, I figure, let's try it here.

Are the mind and the brain the same thing?

The War on Cool

The shorter shorty rode his two wheeler without training wheels for the first time this weekend. You could tell he was nervous and asked at first that we not remove them. But some gentle coaxing from TheWife and he agreed to give it a try and it was just a few minutes later that I let go of the bike and he rode by himself for several yards. I gave the obligatory "You did it!" and he had that smile we all know, the "I'm so proud of myself, oh my god I didn't think I could do that, wow" smile. It is authentic joy. It is the opposite of cool.

I look at that smile and then I look at my college students. There is a tyranny of the cool. Authentic displays of emotion are "so gay" and are actively quelled...usually.

In my philosophy of science class, I have a critical mass of students who love science and who have decided that it is a geek-safe space. They just don't care about what the cool kids think of them. Man, were they into it yesterday in talking about Thomas Kuhn's notion of paradigm shift and whether there could be an extra-paradigmatic notion of rationality sufficiently robust to sustain a meaningful concept of scientific progress. It reminded me of the bike. It was so much fun.

So, I'm declaring war on cool again. Cool sucks. Cool keeps us from engaging with each other and the world. Cool keeps down the smart, the strange, the interesting.

But the Heathers have the social capital and are not about to give it up. I need strategy here people. How do we launch our attack? How do we make authenticity acceptable?

Our Third Blogoversary

Today is the third anniversary of Philosophers' Playground. Hard to believe it's been three years and 975 posts. I want thank everyone who has stopped by, commented, guest posted, or lurked. I am incredibly proud of the gang who frequents the place. Friends from various places, former students, family, and folks I know just from our daily fun here. I love the debate, I love the puns, I love the company. Thanks everyone.

The Clown Princes of Basketball

Friends,

Last weekend I took the short people to see the Harlem Globetrotters. I've loved them since I was a kid in the Meadowlark Lemon, Curly Neal, Geese Ausby, Marcus Haynes era (my first lunchbox when I was six featured the Globetrotters). Their shows still has all the elements it always has and the kids were still alternately mesmerized and howling. Everything from the bucket of confetti to the foul shot on a string, the weave and five touch slam, and of course the magic circle. If hearing Brother Bones' whistled version of Sweet Georgia Brown does not bring an instant smile to your face, may you play for the Washington Generals in your next life.

They started in the mid-1920s in Illinois as a serious competitive team. The clowning developed over time and would only come out once they had a significant lead. They were not entertainers, but basketball players.

Then Abe Saperstein came aboard and made the team's hometown Harlem, even though they were all from Chicago. As they were originally a Midwest touring group, the name Harlem made them seem more exotic and as this was the high point of the Harlem renaissance, it denoted something significant in its east coast reference.

But they were not a local act for long. The only sporting team to give command performances for the President of the United States, the Queen of England, and the Pope, the Globetrotters have not lost to their arch-rivals the Washington Generals since January 5, 1971. I am pleased to report that in Towson, Maryland last weekend, the streak stayed alive.



Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Pros and Cons of Organized Youth Sports

Both of the short people are on teams right now. Big shorty is playing soccer and little shorty is in little league. I was an athlete back when and I wanted my kids to be involved in team athletics, but I'm not a little league parent and I'm finding myself more and more ambivalent.

On the plus side, we need to make physical activity more a part of the lives of people in this culture any way we can. Childhood obesity, diabetes, and all sorts of public health problems are rampant and fun exercise is a good thing. Additionally, it teaches kids that they can do things that are hard, they can push themselves, and they learn to find that extra-reserve to give it that extra kick when they needed it. I believe that these lessons helped me in grad school.

You also learn to be part of a team, to play fair, to work hard, to win with dignity, and lose with grace. You learn how to deal with jerks and to depend on others.

But, on the other hand, there is a stratification in this culture that puts people at the top who probably shouldn't be there. Youth athletics is an early indoctrination into our jocks are tops social structure where prowess on the field translates into social capital. The worst of our patriarchal culture is openly transmitted. There are starters and scrubs and the kids who end up as bench warmers are often the ones whose self-esteemed was already getting whacked. The "win baby win" ethos that destroyed our economy and foreign policy is there in miniature and the kids of jerks tend to be little jerks.

You do come away at the end of the day and wonder if what they picked up was on balance better or worse. So, with youth athletics, do the pros outweigh the cons?

The First Amendment and The Ambiguity of Marriage

Some marriages in Pennsylvania are being annulled. Not because of domestic strife, but because of over-zealous county clerks with political agendas.

In 2004, Michelle and Marc planned to marry in Philadelphia and get their license in Bucks County - a decision influenced only by the office's proximity to their home in Hatboro.

They were acting within the law, of course. Couples can buy their marriage licenses in any one of Pennsylvania's 67 counties and hold their ceremonies in any other.

So how, the Toths now wonder, is their marriage considered legal in Montgomery County, but possibly null and void in Bucks?

The short answer is that the people responsible for issuing marriage licenses - the 67 elected clerks of Orphans Court - are at odds with one another. And the growing ranks of couples using a nontraditional officiant or no officiant at all are getting caught in the conflict.

On one side are clerks, such as those in Bucks and Delaware counties, who want the state marriage-license law tightened. They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.

On the other side are clerks, including those in Philadelphia, Chester, and Montgomery counties, who say the law is clear as long as it is read without bias. Their position has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union. (This issue does not exist in New Jersey.)

The irreligious are stretching the law by getting themselves married in a way that is consistent with their beliefs? Interesting. Seems like we need a reminder about that pesky First Amendment which says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This is not Congress acting, but it is well worth the time to review what it was that our Founding Fathers were concerned about to see why these clerks are being truly unamerican.

The context for the Founders' concern about Church and State comes from a conflict between their Enlightenment roots and their English heritage. England had an official Church, the Church of England, and this had two effects that they wanted to avoid for this nation. First, having an official Church meant having an official theology. This would curtail the open and free marketplace of religious ideas, something abhorrent to children of the Enlightenment. Further, it allowed the Church a place as the source of governmental legitimacy. The Divine Right of Kings was overseen by those who had a monopoly on the Divine. For thinkers trying to set up a democratic system where the government derived legitimacy from the will of the people, an official theological doctrine was problematic.

So, let's turn back to Pennsylvania. What is the worry of these clerks? People are getting married by people other than judges or "legitimate" clergy.

But in recent years, weddings have shifted toward a personalized approach. More couples, like the Toths, have wanted to write and conduct their own ceremonies or have someone close to them do the honors.

That troubled David Cleaver, the lawyer who represents the Association of Clerks, on two fronts. He envisioned that marriages solemnized by clergy from unknown, possibly Internet-based churches eventually might be challenged in court. And, Cleaver said, if self-uniting ceremonies ever were challenged, that would undermine the status of legitimate Quaker marriages, too.

Long-standing marriages could be declared null and void, Cleaver warned. Children could be bastardized, and government pensions and military benefits might be put in jeopardy.

Marriages would not be legitimate because the clergy who conducted them were not "legitimate" clergy. What makes them legitimate? According to York County judge Maria Musti Cook they have established congregations and church buildings. Truly a peculiar ruling.

We give clergy the power we give to justices of the peace and judges, but no one else. Why? Because marriage is ambiguous. Gay-marriage opponents repeatedly refer to THE definition of marriage, as if it only has one definition. But like so many words, of course, marriage has multiple definitions, many different senses in which the word may be legitimately used. It is a legal status, a religious ritual, and a social standing just to name three. And these are all different. When I was 13, I had a bar mitzvah. the rabbi said that on May 2, 1982 I was a man. But I could not legally drive a car, join the military, purchase or consume alcohol, was still covered by my parent's insurance...I was an adult in the religious community, but not in terms of the legal status. The two are separate.

This is precisely the separation we fail to make in the case of marriage. My wife and I wrote our ceremony and had a non-standard officiant. I recently was ordained myself by the Church of Universal Life in order to marry two dear, dear friends, writing the ceremony ourselves and including rituals we appropriated and created to make the moment spiritually meaningful in the broadest sense of that term. These were weddings in every way.

What the clerks in Pennsylvania (and the opponents of gay marriage -- and let's not fool ourselves into thinking these are separate issues, just as stem cell research is really a proxy abortion battle this is really about gay marriage) are doing has two steps: first, willfully conflate the religious status of marriage with the legal status of marriage; second, define the religious status of marriage theologically. Both steps are fallacious.

The first is the basis for the scare tactics of the "defense of marriage" bigots. Legalizing same sex marriages would not force any church to marry anyone they did not want. As an atheist, I could not get married by most Christian clergy. Churches are their own clubs and they run by their own rules. Just as the Moose or the Freemasons or the Shriners could refuse my request for membership, so too conservative churches could refuse requests to marry same sex couples just as they refuse to marry couples of other faith traditions. But the Shirners could not refuse my right to peaceably assemble with others. That is a right I have and needs to be protected even if they don't want me congregating with them. Similarly, the church may refuse to marry a couple, but it is wrong for them to deny them the right to marry.

But it is the second step that is particularly pernicious here. Clergy being defined in terms of established organizations with special status in that organization. This has crossed the line into government mandated theology, exactly what our Framers intended to avoid. Quakers do not allow that anyone has special standing or powers. Judaism, similarly, does not endow rabbis with any special powers or connection to the divine -- they are simply scholars, just another person with a job like any doctor or butcher. It also takes those who are deeply spiritual, but whose sense of the Divine is not to be found in any organized religion and excludes them, radicals like the Father of our Constitution, Thomas Paine,

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."

This decision, this interpretation privileges a theological viewpoint and enshrines it in law. It is based upon the idea that while there is no one denomination that is an official religion, that there is a theological foundation that defines what is to be considered a religion officially. This is a distinction without a difference. In the Church of England, there were theologians with divergent opinions, but they were part of a religious movement that was married to the State. Here we have Catholic priests and Protestant ministers with theological differences, but are part of religious movement that is now married to the state.

That is unamerican, that is precisely what the First Amendment to the United States Constitution was designed to protect against. It is an offense to the open and free marketplace of ideas and it is an offense to the secular foundation of our government. It is not only wrong, it is a dishonest and disguised attempt to further a cause dedicated to removing the rights of an oppressed group of Americans.

Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse: Easy Edition

Haven't done one of these in a while. "Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse," which goes by the acronym D.U.C.K., is an exercise in which we take a question that should not be asked, a question that seems to have no answer or a perfectly trivial answer and actually have a discussion about it for no good reason.


Is pie, in fact, easy? If so, which is easier, pie or falling off a log?

Bullshit or Not: James Joyce Edition

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

On Saint Patrick's Day, it seems appropriate to pull a quotation for discussion from one of Ireland's greatest minds, James Joyce. Here's the quotation:

"Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police."

Is the notion of the mad genius just a fiction? Is it something we've dreamt up to make the great seem flawed for precisely what makes them superior, thereby protecting ourselves in our mediocrity? Or was Aristotle right that "There was never a genius without a tincture of madness"?

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

Victims and Sympathy

I find myself unable to muster a lot of sympathy for two sets of victims who have been in the news lately.

The first group are those who lost money in the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Those who invested with Madoff did so because he was who he was and promised what he promised. Of course, what he promised and claimed to deliver was so spectacular that it could not be on the level if it was real. The folks who got taken surely knew this. They had to figure that because he was the consummate insider, Madoff was working on inside information and that's illegal. Sure, he was a crook, but he was a crook for them. Of course, that isn't how it turned out. Yes, I feel for those whose relatives invested their money for them, relatives who thought they were doing what was in their loved ones best interest, but for so many of these folks, it was greed that got them stung and while they are victims, I find it hard to feel sympathy.

The other is a group that NPR keeps profiling. Business owners who contributed to groups trying to pass proposition 8, which stripped gays and lesbians of their right to marry in California, complain of being targeted by protesters driving business away. They argue that they are being punished for a political disagreement. But, you know, here were customers of yours whose basic human rights you were helping to deny, do you really think they would continue to happily give you their money? Some folks have lost their jobs as managers, others have come close to losing their businesses. But, again, I have a hard time being sympathetic. These were human beings, human beings that you had a relationship with, and you still tried to take their rights away.

Do victims always deserve sympathy? If not, what conditions are necessary or sufficient?

Passing the Plate: Smart Joke Edition

Friends,

Today is Einstein's birthday and in his honor, let's pass the plate. Other religions asks for monetary donations, but Comedists tithe jokes. So, for uncle Albert, let's do smart jokes of any variety.

My favorite new physics joke:

They built a fence around the physics building at my college, but forgot to put in a gate. So, they cut a slit in the fence and the physicists starting popping out one by one. Then they cut a second slit and now none of them come out, they just stand there and wave.

Two I just wrote:

I took part in a medical experiment testing the placebo effect, but unfortunately I was in the control group.

Did you hear that Adam Smith's wife divorced him. Apparently, it wasn't just his hand that was invisible.

Others? Dig deep, my friends.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Bullshit or Not: Einstein Edition

On the eve of his birthday, let's play Bullshit or Not.

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

Here's the quotation,

“The psychological root of anti-Semitism lies in the fact that the Jews are a group of people unto themselves. Their Jewishness is visible in their physical appearance, and one notices their Jewish heritage in their intellectual work.”

Can you find Jewish heritage in intellectual work? Do Jews write peotry differently? Do biology differently?

Surely this is not restricted to Jews. Is there a Japanese style of particle physics? An African-American style of anthropology?

So, bullshit or not, you decide. As usual, feel free to leave a single word or a dissertation.

The GOP Is Right, It Is Clinton's Fault

I was listening to a local NPR talk show the other day and it struck me, it IS Clinton's fault, just like the Republicans claim.

The radio discussion concerned the near doubling of electric bills for many customers in Maryland. The cause? Deregulation of the electric industry. When the debate went on concerning it a decade ago, the line was that the free market would bring prices for consumers down. Competition good, regulation of industry bad. Market forces raise all boats. So, the legislature went along and -- of course -- the consumer got the shaft. So now there are attempts to put the genie back in the toothpaste tube and re-regulate the industry.

It is just one small example of everything we are seeing all the way across the economy. Why? Because high school never ends. The jerks from high school who lied, cheated, and stole? They went to college, got MBAs and now run corporations. Those with power positions in the marketplace are filthy rotten.

When their buddies got hold of the Congress and White House, of course, they invited the foxes into the hen house. Bush created a special tax break to help transport them into the hen house. But then so did Clinton. Clinton and his DLC chums happily sold out the party -- Clinton especially so when he realized that it was his ticket to a second term after Monica -- and played the deregulation game just like the GOoPers. VP Biden did it too with the bankruptcy bill. Call it "deregulation" and appeal to free market competition and how it will benefit everyone and really use the legislation to rig the game against most Americans in ways that someone without a law degree could never understand. Put on commercials with Harry and Louise to demonize anyone who doesn't want to hand the country over to our corporate overlords as dirty fucking hippies, socialists. And when it passes, let people with the moral fiber of Jesse James loot our entire economy into dust.

Yes, we have "people" like Phil Graham to blame. Yes, this sort of thing became endemic during the last eight years. But the snowball was rolling happily downhill for the years before that. To get himself another term William Jefferson Clinton gave our government to the people that destroyed it by becoming one of them.

The man did great things in terms of foreign policy which is why having Hilary at the helm of the Department of State is a very good thing. But keep the Clintons and their ilk away from anything that relates to economic regulation...you know, folks like Larry Summers who Obama put in one of the most powerful positions.

Intuition and Truth

Had lunch with Jeff Maynes yesterday and we got to talking about his research in experimental philosophy.

In philosophy, topics we deal with are often not open to empirical investigation. Therefore, we often use intuitions as data. This is frequently the case in ethics and the philosophy of language. We test boundary cases, for example, where clearly this act is wrong, yet moral system X permits it showing that the system is not a necessary condition for moral rightness.

But while the intuitions are about untestable claims, what becomes testable is how widespread the intuitions are. So a group of philosophers have recently begun testing exactly this. Experimental philosophy in part looks at the intuitions at the heart of certain major philosophical works and sees whether those intuitions are shared by non-technicians, by the average person.

The question we discussed is what this shows. Suppose you have a minority intuition, does this mean that your intuition is in some sense wrong? Can your intuitions change? Is this a result of life experiences? How about as a result of rational argumentation? If intuitions are malleable, can they be used in philosophy in the way we tend to? If we surrender them, what else do we have for discussing the cogency of many philosophical views?

Ritual and Body

My great-uncle just passed away and yesterday was the funeral. I've never been one for ritual because it seems that the process of scripting severely limits the room for authentic spontaneous expressions of meaning. But funerals seem different. The emotion is so overwhelming that having the stability of the structure is surely comforting. I'd always thought of cremation or giving my body to science, but it does seem that the body is an important part of the process for the loved ones. I remember when my grandfather passed, that it didn't seem entirely real until I felt the heft of the casket. It was the feeling of the weight that made me really understand that this was my last moment with him. Is the experience different when one spreads the ashes of a loved one? Is it the absence, the finality, or the physicality? Is the body an essential part of the letting go?

Recipes as Intellectual Property

So TheWife and I were in our favorite Persian restaurant yesterday, having a little late celebration of her birthday (if you're in the Baltimore area and have never tried the Orchard Market Cafe, you're in for a treat). We were enjoying our usual appetizers -- her an eggplant and artichoke dish and me haleem bedemajune, an eggplant and lentil dip -- when she looks up and asks, "So, if somehow, illicitly, I was able to photocopy the recipe, would there be anything wrong with that? I would not open a competing restaurant or make money off of it, but I could make it for myself at home." I asked whether it would mean she would come to the restaurant any less frequently? She said no, the salmon would bring her back, so they would suffer no loss of business. the idea then is that they would endure absolutely no harm as a result of her acquiring the recipe without permission, but was there still something wrong with taking it?

We shared the intuition that there would be something wrong here. I find the concept of intellectual property a bit problematic -- trying to patch a 17th century concept onto 20th century issues in a way that doesn't dovetail quite right in many cases -- but it seems appropriate here. A recipe, assuming it is novel, is a creative work and that seems to endow the creator with certain rights to it. Acquiring it on the sly would seem like stealing here and thereby wrong.

But then suppose by enjoying the dish, you were able to figure out what is in it -- clearly eggplant, artichoke heart, olive and a mustard-based cream sauce, but what else? If you tasted carefully and figured out what seasonings to add and tried a couple times until you got the proportions just right, would that be different? You've ended up with the respire that isn't yours, so it's the same end result, but it does seem a bit different. Why?

Is it because by tasting and recreating, I am adding my own labor? Is it now my creative act? But why would that little bit of effort entitle me to the creative work of someone else? Is it because the tasting is public -- the dish is offered for anyone who will purchase a serving and that act of giving me the dish makes it no longer private property? But I wouldn't have the right to ask for the recipe just because I ordered it. I may have the right to ask whether there is, say, peanut or wheat in it because of allergies, but that is not asking to be able to make it myself. Or is the intuition wrong and it remains wrong to try to "reverse engineer" a dish you've eaten somewhere and loved?

The Feast of Saint Lou

Friends,

This week we celebrate the feast of Saint Bud. Born Louis Francis Cristillo, he grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, a tough town where he was a well known basketball player and an amateur boxer before becoming turning to show biz.

He got a few jobs in Hollywood as a stunt double and an extra, but his career didn't take off and trying to get back home, he ran out of money. Stuck in the midwest, he became a burlesque comic, adopting the stage name Costello after a popular actress of the times. It was working the circuit that he met straightman Bud Abbott and they worked together on and off until 1936 when they became an official team.

Their big break came in 1938 when they played the Kate Smith Hour, a major radio program where they performed possibly the best known skit in the history of comedy, "Who's on First." It cemented their place in comedy history and they went on to become two of the biggest names in radio and film.

Sunday mornings growing up always meant Abbott and Costello movies on the tv, something that cable has sadly displaced.



Happy Birthday, Lou Costello.

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve

Kind of Person: Jerk Edition

This worked well the first time we tried it, so let's go back to the well. The idea is to come up with descriptions of the form "S/he is the kind of person who..." that capture an archetype. Last time we tried the perfect people, this time let's go in the opposite direction and describe those erasable characters who you just have to hate, the real nasty jerks who revel in kicking you when you're down.

"He was the kind of person who grew a beard, knocked out his teeth, and gave himself a scar just to make sure no one would ever have the pleasure of defiling a photo of him."

"She was the kind of person who if ever you needed a hand, she'd always give you the back of it."

"He was the kind of person who would not only use a magnifying glass to set ants on fire, he would bring his own sunlamp in case it was cloudy."

Yours?

Bidirectional Words

So, this morning driving into school, the older of the short people asks me if there is a name for the class of words that spell a different word backwards. Palindromes are the special case where it is the same word in either direction, but what of the more general case where you get two different words? Is there a name for that?

She came up with a number of three and four letter examples -- saw/was, tool/loot, stop/pots. I mentioned the classic eight letter instance desserts/stressed. Others that you can think of? What is the longest?

Topics That Shock Classes

My favorite Doonesbury is this one.

My philosophy of science class last week made me think of it. Not because they are passionless note-scribblers, quite the opposite. It's a wonderfully lively bunch. But then we hit Hume's problem of induction and Goodman's grue paradox and they went absolutely bananas. Hume doesn't usually get the hackles up, but grue always does. Man, students HATE that argument...always gets them riled up.

My question is what else in your experience has this effect? What as a student just charged you up? What as a teacher do you find gets your students loud and passionate?

Is Rush Limbaugh the de facto Leader of the GOP?

Rahm Emmanuel has been setting Rush Limbaugh up as the bogeyman to position the President's agenda against because Limbaugh, they argue, is the head of the Republican Party. Some argue that it is a cheap political tactic. It is. But is it true? D.L. Hughley asked Michael Steele about it and Steele said that he was the head of the GOP...well, until like Representative Peter King who also denied the power of Limbaugh, he had to crawl back on his belly and kiss Limbaugh's feet. So, is Limbaugh really the head of the GOP?

Intelligent Design Provocation: How To Respond?

So a Christian group on campus sponsored a showing of Ben Stein's pro-Intelligent Design polemic "No Intelligence Allowed" and sent around an e-mail asking for faculty or student group presence at the film and for a round-table afterward. The claim, and let's take it at face value, was to have an open discussion about the status of intelligent design and evolution for the campus community.

It seems like there were three options:

(1) Ignore it for political reasons -- after Dover, the air has come out of the ID balloon and engaging it only helps reinflate them by giving the false image of there actually being a debate.

(2) Dismiss it for intellectual reasons -- there hasn't been a live debate around this since the end of the 19th century and engaging gives a false impression that the question remains open.

(3) Engage it for discourse reasons -- it is public discourse, the offer was made in good faith, and there needs to be a voice in the conversation familiar with the science and with questions of scientific methodology.

I ignored it (to be honest because I've got too much else to do and it's just hard to get worked up over it anymore), but should I have?