A New Virtue: Expansiveness

This is an old, widely-accepted virtue: knowing what you believe and standing up for it, even if it is unpopular to do so.

Yeah, I guess it's a virtue. I mean, if you really know what you believe, you might as well stand up for it, rather than just shrugging your shoulders and pretending you don't care.

My commitment to that virtue, though, is fairly dubious, mostly because there's another, sometimes-conflicting virtue that I like better. I call it Expansiveness, and I define it as "having exposed oneself to, and really considered, a wide range of perspectives, happenings, ideologies, subjects, and ways of being human." (I borrowed the phrase "ways of being human" from Richard Rorty.) I like it because it's infinite; you can always become more expansive. Isn't that exciting?! Expansive people are fun to talk to, because they are genuinely interested in what you have to say, they don't condescend, and they are not so caught up in their own web of beliefs to consider something new. You can tell when you talk to them that their minds are works-in-progress, that they are actively thinking and not just chewing on the same old dogma. Then, when they tell you what they believe, you can trust that they have done their research, thought it through, and considered a good number of opposing viewpoints.

Best of all, in talking with them, you yourself become more expansive, because you are taking advantage of the thinking they have already done.

The New Sins

http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/new_sins/index.php

The Scriptives

Things that are better descriptive than prescriptive:

the dictionary
religion
free market theory
evolutionary theory
poetry

Futarchy

http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.html

Minnesota Senate Recount

http://senaterecount.startribune.com/ballots/

The challenged ballots are hilarious.

"Barney's final White House video"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7784197.stm

The Next Challenge for the Democrats

It would seem like the Democratic Party is doing really well and the Republican Party is really struggling, given the results of the last elections, but really what I think is happening is the playing out of a simple narrative: Republicans are more popular during good times, and Democrats are more popular during bad.

When the economy is strong, Republican rhetoric about small government and de-regulation makes more sense to people, because they don't need the government to step in and create jobs or stop financiers from creating weird, unregulated securities, because those things usually take care of themselves in the end. Folks can just keep on working 40 hours a week without fear of losing their jobs, enjoy their employer-provided health coverage, take out huge loans to send their kids to college, watch their investments steadily increase, and let the good times roll. When people aren't shooting each other but are using their guns to go hunting instead, it makes sense that people should be allowed to keep their guns and not have the government trying to take them away. When the globe isn't warming, it makes sense that oil and coal companies should be able to explore and extract to their hearts' content.

However, when things go wrong, that's when the Democrats step in. The financial industry gets a little out of hand, so the Democrats have to come in and clean things up. When unemployment is low, the Democrats swoop in with their promises to create jobs through public works. When the globe is warming, the Democrats have to put the "extraction industries" in their place. When minority rights are being trampled on or certain demographics are put at a systemic disadvantage, the Democrats are at least willing to consider helping them out.

Conservatives get indignant about the fact that the Democrats are always trying to make life a bit easier for convicted criminals, illegal immigrants, sexual deviants, people who are too lazy to get a job, people who are too irresponsible to pay the mortgage, people who shouldn't have accepted the mortgage in the first place, flag-burners, drunks, atheists, terrorists, scoundrels, rascals, vagabonds, and pirates, but do little to encourage good, honest, hard-working, tax-paying, church-going, God-fearing, home-owning families who are the perfect model of what everyone should be like. In short, the Republicans seem to say, "the Democrats are always complaining. But what is it that they want?"

That's a question that the Democrats need to get better at answering. (Not that I condone any of that nonsense about the God-fearing, home-owning families, but still, it's worth considering, for political purposes if nothing else.) Democrats are not great, but better than the Republicans, at answering the question, "How do we get us out of this mess?" But the Republicans are better at answering the question, "What does a well-functioning society look like?" What the Democrats need to do is demonstrate that America can be a thriving, stable, fun place during a period of predominantly Democratic leadership. They can't just go on being the party of the bad times.

Pizza Capitalism

"So why is the [Pizza] Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it - talking trade balances here - once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here - once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel - once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity - y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else

music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery

[...]

Pizza delivery [is] a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence, from Abkhazia, Rwanda, Guanajuato, South Jersey, and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand. And they had studied this problem. Graphed the frequency of doorway delivery-time disputes. Wired the early Deliverators to record, then analyze, the debating tactics, the voice-stress histograms, the distinctive grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to lie, or delude themselves, about the time of their phone call and get themselves a free pizza; no, they deserved a free pizza along with their life, liberty, and pursuit of whatever, it was fucking inalienable. Sent psychologists out to these people's houses, gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview, hooked them to polygraphs, studied their brain waves as they showed them choppy, inexplicable movies of porn queens and late-night car crashes and Sammy Davis, Jr., put them in sweet-smelling, mauve-walled rooms and asked them questions about Ethics so perplexing that even a Jesuit couldn't respond without committing a venial sin. The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it, and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix: smart boxes."

--from Snow Crash (1992), by Neal Stephenson

Year in Ideas

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/12/14/magazine/2008_IDEAS.html

Greenmaroons

What if Bethel College started marketing itself as a "green" school? They already have a decent start. The prairie reconstruction project across the street is a great idea. They have a car-sharing program, they have stickers next to light switches reminding people to turn off lights when they leave the room, and they offer interterm trips with the biology department to Central America.

To expand on those features, the opportunities are endless, and they vary greatly in cost and complexity. They could turn a small section of land into a campus garden, and make it a student-run project by subsidizing a club to tend to it or by offering scholarships, wages, or course credits to do so. Those students could then sell the fruits and vegetables in the local community to raise money for additional green projects around campus. The college could also offer financial incentives for students to leave their vehicles at home rather than bringing them to campus. They could buy fresh produce for the cafeteria from the local farmers' market. They could offer a major in environmental or agricultural studies (agricultural would be more unique), and hire a professor with a background in both economics and agriculture. They could give gift certificates to local businesses that promote fair trade, commit to using minimal packaging, or sell only pesticide- and chemical-free products at various campus events. They could build a power-generating windmill or solar panels on campus. They could encourage composting. They could make sure every building they build meets the highest standards in energy efficiency. They could offer a competitive financial award in the business department for green entrepreneurship. They could start a year-long or semester-long competition, with a kickass reward, to see which dorm or which residence hall can use the least amount of water per capita. They could encourage students to do their senior seminars on topics relevant to the Great Plains region. Biology students could research alternative farming techniques with the help of Bethel alumni in the farms around Goessel, Hillsboro, and Moundridge. Physics students could study wind and solar energy. English students could study literature of the Plains, working to discern the relationships between the land and the cultures that inhabit it.

No doubt most of these suggestions cost more money than I think and are easier said than done, but that is not my concern right now. I'm just brainstorming.

When my grandparents went to Bethel College, most of their classmates grew up on farms. Several of my parents' classmates did as well. Very few of mine did. That pattern, of course, mirrors national trends; nowadays less than 2 percent of Americans live on farms. But there is another national trend that Bethel would do well to take maximum advantage of: a growing craze for organic products, sustainable living methods, and local economies.

When I was a student at Bethel (not so terribly long ago), farming was seen by many as a brainless, conservative, blue-collar activity that no smart, liberal, upwardly-mobile college graduate would aspire to. My friends in the sciences leaned toward medical research and practice, my friends in the humanities leaned toward the education system, and my friends in the in-between disciplines (psychology, history, social work, etc.) leaned toward social and human services. I didn't have many close friends in the business department, and those I did have leaned toward whatever would make them money. Generally, few of my friends wanted to live in Kansas, unless they could stay within the protective Bethel bubble.

I think, though, that if Bethel played its cards right, it could turn its location (rural, agricultural, quiet central Kansas) from a weakness into a strength. It could market itself as the greenest Kansas college (using The Green as a central metaphor), with the most expertise about sustainable agriculture and the 21st-century food and energy economies. In doing so, they might convince some local farm kids to come to Bethel to learn about agriculture rather than going to K-State. They might also strengthen their ties with the legions of Bethel alumni in the area with farming roots. If President-Elect Obama's vision for a "new energy economy" pans out, it will include a new "green-collar" job sector based heavily in America's rural areas. It would be nice to place some Bethel graduates in prominent positions in the new green-collar industry. If Kansas is the future home of wind farms, vast fields of solar panels, and revolutionary agricultural experiments, wouldn't it be great if Bethel could be on the leading end of the revolution?

Internal and External Conversations

Every community, no matter how big or small, needs a proper balance between internal conversations and external conversations.

By internal conversations, I mean conversations about issues pertaining only to that community. Housemates must sometimes discuss procedures for washing dishes; the government must sometimes discuss the importance of maintaining transparency and limiting the influence of lobbyists; friends and lovers must sometimes discuss the role conversational styles play in creating or solving conflicts.

By external conversations, I mean conversations that could be had with both members and non-members of that community. Housemates should be able to discuss politics, movies, dreams; the government have to be able to talk about poverty, scientific research, the environment; and friends and lovers should be able to make jokes, participate in hobbies together, and talk about things that annoy them about other people.

The same is true for individuals: People should spend time reflecting on their actions (internal), and they should also act (external).

Ideal Academic Community

My four principles of an ideal academic community:

1. No scholar has the final word.
2. No narrative is all-encompassing.
3. Every argument is judged solely on the basis of its explanatory power.
4. Nobody who wants to participate is excluded.

Electricity-from-Manure Project

"At the electricity-from-manure project her in Sterksel, [the Netherlands,] the refuse from thousands of pigs is combined with local waste materials (outdated carrot juice and crumbs from a cookie factory), and pumped into warmed tanks called digesters. There, resident bacteria release the natural gas within, which is burned to generate heat and electricity.

"The farm uses 25 percent of the electricity, and the rest is sold to a local power provider. The leftover mineral slurry is an ideal fertilizer that reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, whose production release a heavy dose of carbon dioxide.

"For this farm the scheme has provided a substantial payback: By reducing its emissions, it has been able to sell carbon credits on European markets. It makes money by selling electricity. It gets free fertilizer."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/science/earth/04meat.html?em

Redescription We Can Believe In

Obama framed his campaign using the mantra "Change we can believe in." That mantra was successful, in part, because of its vagueness; the expression is broad enough to encompass lots of different definitions of "change." Post-election, it is natural that some people who voted for Obama will be satisfied with his decisions, and others will be disappointed; this difference largely hinges upon one's interpretation of "change." Depending on which interpretation(s) are yours, Obama's Cabinet selections of the past week might either please you, disgust you, or not affect you one way or the other. Here are a few I've heard:

--A change from cronyism to competency.
--A change from Republican to Democrat.
--A change from old faces to new faces.
--A change from a government that listens to lobbyists to a government that listens to the people.
--A change from corruption to reform.
--A change from a system controlled by the rich to a system controlled by the middle-class.
--A change from de-regulation of the financial system to regulation.
--A change from capitalism to socialism.
--A change from war in Iraq to war in Afghanistan.
--A change from Washington insiders to Washington outsiders.
--A change from an arrogant, ethnocentric, bellicose, nationalistic worldview to an inclusive, multicultural, peace-promoting, global worldview.

Richard Rorty, the philosopher I find most interesting, wrote in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) that change occurs not by way of grand discovery about how the world really works, but by way of redescription. Important thinkers like Hegel, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Nabokov, Derrida, and Orwell, he said, did not assume their importance because of groundbreaking discoveries they made, but because their redescriptions of the world and of their predecessors' works spoke to the contingencies of their particular times and places. Derrida redescribed Heidegger, who redescribed Nietzsche, who redescribed Marx, who redescribed Hegel. Rorty redescribed all of them. This all leads me to ask, how might Rorty, were he alive, have viewed the Obama transition process? I'm going to add one more interpretation of "change" to the list, on behalf of Richard Rorty:

--A change from one way of talking about the world to another. (Or as Rorty would have said it, "Replacing one final vocabulary with another.")

Of course, to Rorty this would not be as insignificant as it sounds; how we talk about the world has a great deal to do with how we act within it. I read the other day some article suggesting that the Obama administration may or may not continue to define the "war on terrorism" as a "war." I also recall Obama's terrific Independence Day speech from earlier this year in which he tried to redefine "patriotism" in terms he found more acceptable. Both of those, I think, are clear examples of a shifting vocabulary. Should be interesting to monitor this shift over the next few years, as the vocabulary of the Obama administration replaces that of the Bush.

Homemade Toothpaste

6 teaspoons baking soda
1/3 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons vegetable glycerin
15 drops peppermint or wintergreen extract

Mix thoroughly.

Personal Responsibility

You know the political myth I hate more than any other? The one that says conservatives believe in personal responsibility more than liberals do. That is just bullshit.

A Popgun or the Crack of Doom?

"The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom." --Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar" (1837)

Hackers

Stuff about hackers:

1. The 1995 film Hackers.
2. "The Hacker Manifesto," from a 1986 edition of Phrack ezine
3. Wikipedia's entry on "Hacker (computer security)"

The Exxon Footnote

"From One Footnote, a Debate over the Tangles of Law, Science, and Money," from the New York Times

I have an opinion about this. The fact that Justice Souter's footnote is even remotely controversial is ludicrous. Exxon commissioned the research; Exxon funded the research; Exxon continued funding the research only when it said what they wanted it to say; legal representatives hired by Exxon were responsible for bringing the research before the Supreme Court. Exxon provided the idea, the means, and the conclusion. The only thing they did not do was conduct the research themselves. Therefore, the research is invalid. Period.

Bailout for Wooden Arrow Companies

One of the guys I traveled with last week told me that the $700 billion "bailout bill," passed in October, contained an earmark for companies that make bows and arrows for children. I didn't believe him. Pork-barrel spending is way too politically unpopular right now, and the public is scrutinizing this process way too closely, for this claim to be true, I thought.

H.R. 1424, "To provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy," Division C, Title V, Subtitle A, Section 503:

"Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children."

Why study stories?

1. To determine what a story says about the culture from which it came.

2. To determine how a story from the past relates to a contemporary situation.

3. To determine how a story was received by different audiences at different times.

4. To determine an author's original intended meaning and purpose.

5. To determine how a story participates in a particular storytelling tradition or traditions.

6. To determine the relationship between a story's form and its content.

7. To determine a story's genre.

8. To determine the relationship between stories in different genres.

9. To determine the relationship between stories from different cultures.

10. To determine which stories are the best and why.

11. To determine how stories reflect ideologies, even when those stories are not overtly ideological.

12. To determine how stories reflect biases, stereotypes, and attitudes with respect to race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

13. To determine how a story participates in, or subverts, a particular intellectual tradition or traditions, such as Marxism, feminism, or psychoanalysis.

14. To determine the relationship between stories and economic systems.

15. To determine the relationship between stories by different authors.

16. To determine a story's moral content.

17. To determine the role of symbols in stories.

18. To determine how stories utilize and reinterpret pre-existing symbols.

19. To determine the elements of a good story.

20. To determine how cultural practices like law, science, technology, and medicine shape the way stories are told and interpreted.

21. To determine how specific technological advances transform the act of storytelling.

(That's all I can think of right now.)

Simplifications

"To simplify something accurately, you've got to understand it deeply."
--Thomas Friedman, qtd. in The New Yorker

I love that quote, but the problem I run into almost daily is, how do you know when someone's simple explanation reflects deep understanding, and when it reflects simple-mindedness? I like it when people use simple analogies and plain language to explain complex systems. For people who have spent a lot of time studying complex systems, like the financial markets or the human genome, it is a real gift to be able to explain them simply to people who aren't as familiar with those systems. But simplicity is also a useful tool for people who want to pretend they know more about a subject than they do, for people who think they understand the subject better than they actually do, or for people who want to influence public opinion on the subject.

My general solution is to trust simple explanations from people with good credentials on the subject, and to be skeptical of simple explanations from people who probably don't understand the subject in a very nuanced way. But even that is occasionally problematic, since some of my acquaintances have an uncanny ability to understand complex systems just by keeping up with the news and talking to people, and other acquaintances have a tendency to think they know a lot about a system when they really only know a little about it.

Hate Crimes Against the Homeless

Here's an op-ed an intern and I wrote in response to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times:

The recent murder of John Robert McGraham, a 55-year-old homeless resident of Los Angeles' Mid-Wilshire area, is chilling testimony to the unique vulnerability that often accompanies homelessness. On October 9, McGraham, while sitting on the sidewalk, was doused with gasoline and set ablaze by an unidentified perpetrator. In spite of the assistance of passersby, McGraham failed to survive the attack.

A few weeks later, a similar occurrence took place in Long Beach, where five homeless individuals were shot dead in a homeless encampment.

Our organization, the National Coalition for the Homeless, has kept track of unprovoked attacks against the homeless such as these since 1999, when we released our first annual report on the topic. In our 2007 study, we reported that at least 160 homeless persons were violently attacked in that year--with at least 28 of those attacks resulting int he victims' deaths. While the nature of these attacks varies, they are most frequently committed by young men and teenagers against older male victims. Many attackers draw their inspiration from pop culture fads such as "Bumfights" videos and the YouTube phenomenon "Bum Hunters," in which actors assault, throw projectiles at, or set on fire unsuspecting, real-life homeless people. Only occasionally, according to our findings, are such attacks committed for material gain.

In response to mounting evidence that systematic, dehumanizing bias is at the heart of so many violent crimes against homeless persons, we advocate passage of the Hate Crime Against the Homeless Statistics Act (H.R. 2216) and its sister bill, the Hate Crimes Against the Homeless Enforcement Act (H.R. 2217). The former would direct the FBI to collect data on potential hate crimes against the homeless, while the latter would add "homeless status" to the list of protected categories under existing hate crime statutes--a list that currently includes "actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, and sexual orientation."

Expanding hate crime laws to protect homeless individuals would indeed mandate stricter sentencing for bias-motivated attackers. Our judgment that hate crimes warrant more severe punishment than some other forms of crime--those motivated by retribution or material gain, for example--has been corroborated by the U.S. Supreme Court, who in 1993 unanimously agreed that "bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest." Furthermore, our statistics, measured against the FBI's indicate that a higher proportion of attacks against homeless individuals results in death than do those against individuals of all other protected categories combined.

More significant to us, though, is the federal government's recognition that dehumanization and neglect of homeless persons is a cultural problem that manifests itself at all levels of society, from laws to attitudes. It is this recognition, we suspect, that has earned our proposed legislation the co-sponsorship of 20 members of Congress and the support of over 150 national, state, and local organizations, including the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

It is not our desire to suggest that crimes against the homeless are categorically worse than crimes against anyone else. Whether or not the recent attacks in the Los Angeles area warrant the "hate crime" label, we are unable to say. Sadly, however, our research suggests that violent crimes against homeless victims, motivated by little more than prejudice and hate, are not without precedent. As long as it is within the realm of possibility that homeless individuals like McGraham have been targeted solely on the basis of their homeless status, the hate crime question should continue to be asked.

"How the Mobile Phone in Your Pocket is Helping to Pay for the Civil War in Congo"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/congo/3407217/How-the-mobile-phone-in-your-pocket-is-helping-to-pay-for-the-civil-war-in-Congo.html

Deep Thoughts about Genomics

"Scientists have learned that the canonical 'genes' account for an embarrassingly tiny part of the human genome: maybe 1 percent of the three billion paired subunits of DNA that are stuffed into nearly every cell of the body qualify as indisputable protein codes. Scientists are also learning that many of the gene-free regions of our DNA are far more loquacious than previously believed, far more willing to express themselves in ways that have nothing to do with protein manufacture."

Fascinating stuff. Especially since I spent so much time in biology and chemistry classes learning that genes are codes for protein synthesis. Four articles from the NY Times that I haven't read all the way through yet, but plan to do so in the near future:

"Scientists and Philosophers Find That 'Gene' Has a Multitude of Meanings"

"Now: The Rest of the Genome"

"In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents' Genes Are in Competition"

"The Promise and Power of RNA"

Are Jack Handey jokes examples of parody or pastiche?

Both parody and pastiche are forms of imitation. The parodist, writes Fredric Jameson, "capitalizes on the uniqueness of [the subject's] styles and seizes on their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities to produce an imitation which mocks the original." Parody usually carries with it an ulterior motive: to satirize or cast ridicule on its subjects. In such cases, parody therefore carries with it "the feeling that there is a linguistic norm in contrast to which the styles of [its subjects] can be mocked." In other words, parody presupposes a norm, and satirizes deviations from that norm.

Pastiche is similar to parody in that it involves "the wearing of a stylistic mask," but contrary to parody, it is "a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody's ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic." In Jameson's words, pastiche is "blank parody.

After giving it some thought, I generally accept the distinction that parody is more humorous than pastiche. But then, what about Jack Handey jokes? Those are definitely more pastiche than parody, but they're also hilarious. Or am I wrong? Are they parody? Are they not hilarious?

"Melting Into Air," from The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/11/10/081110crat_atlarge_lanchester?currentPage=3

The two best parts of this article:

1. Warren Buffett on the absurdity of derivatives: "The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen).... Say you want to write a contract speculating on the number of twins to be born in Nebraska in 2020. No problem—at a price, you will easily find an obliging counterparty."

2. The writer, John Lanchester, on the parallel between the financial crisis and postmodernism: "If the invention of derivatives was the financial world’s modernist dawn, the current crisis is unsettlingly like the birth of postmodernism. For anyone who studied literature in college in the past few decades, there is a weird familiarity about the current crisis: value, in the realm of finance capital, evokes the elusive nature of meaning in deconstructionism. According to Jacques Derrida, the doyen of the school, meaning can never be precisely located; instead, it is always 'deferred,' moved elsewhere, located in other meanings, which refer and defer to other meanings—a snake permanently and necessarily eating its own tail. This process is fluid and constant, but at moments the perpetual process of deferral stalls and collapses in on itself. Derrida called this moment an 'aporia,' from a Greek term meaning 'impasse.' There is something both amusing and appalling about seeing his theories acted out in the world markets to such cataclysmic effect."

"How 6 Parts Nearly Delayed the World's Biggest Airliner," from NPR

I like this kind of journalism:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96378999

Is "pragmatism" an alternative to liberalism and conservatism?

I've heard it suggested that Barack Obama is neither a liberal nor a conservative, but a "pragmatist." Google "obama pragmatist" for a smattering of evidence, typified here. I have heard the claim both upheld and challenged, by both his supporters and his opponents, as both a criticism and an accolade.

For some, pragmatism suggests a lack of dedication to ideals, "flip-flopping," and a politician's proclivity for saying anything to get elected. People who think of pragmatism this way might cite as evidence Obama's broken promise to only accept public financing for the general election if John McCain would agree. He initially spouted the ideals, these people would say, but when a more pragmatic option came up, he jumped on it.

One friend, a devout liberal, too liberal for the Democratic party, told me several months ago that her message to Barack can be summarized, "Quit pandering and get back on the Left where you belong!" (This was right after Obama spoke in favor of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the D.C. gun ban. Her allegation became even harsher when Obama began to support off-shore drilling.)

For others, pragmatism is a rare breed of politics based on consensus, utilitarianism, and an open mind. "Reaching across the aisle" is the phrase most often used to express this idea of pragmatism, and by that standard John McCain sought to portray himself as a pragmatist, as well. In fact, McCain frequently charged Obama with being the "most liberal Senator" and failing to provide convincing evidence of having "reached across the aisle" and "challenged his Party's leadership."

A similar but distinct definition of a pragmatist places "pragmatism" somewhere in the middle on the continuum of "idealism" to "realism." By this definition, the candidates have occasionally landed at different points along the continuum. For example, after Russia's invasion of Georgia, McCain declared that Russia should be kicked out of the G-8 as punishment for their unlawful actions; Obama responded that even though he condemned Russia's actions, kicking them out of the G-8 would only further isolate them and make future negotiations more difficult. McCain the idealist, Obama the pragmatist.

Still other definitions remain. Pragmatism is sometimes considered a disavowal of ideology and a commitment only to truth, common sense, fact, and expert advice. Nonpartisan problems, people who buy this idea of pragmatism would say, should be solved with nonpartisan solutions. Put the politics aside and get something done, they say.

Which of these definitions are more correct than others? Is the descriptor "pragmatist" an apt one for Barack Obama? These questions are difficult to answer with any certainty, and it doesn't matter. When politicians use the term "pragmatism" to describe their political philosophies or their approaches to an issue, I usually regard it as a meaningless rhetorical strategy, meant to suggest that the issues important to them are "beyond politics." (My response: no issue is beyond politics.) There is much to be admired in being led by the spirit of pragmatism, just as their is much to be distrusted, but the truth is that pragmatism is neither the exclusive domain of liberals nor conservatives, nor is it accurately conceived as an alternative to either.

"Tearaway Burkas and Tinplate Menorahs," by Al Franken

There's no Senate race I'm more interested in this year than Minnesota, where Al Franken (that's right, the same guy who wrote Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot) could actually defeat incumbent Norm Coleman. Lately Norm's been waving around a column Al wrote for Playboy in 2000 called "Porn-o-Rama." (Haven't been able to find it online. Any long-time Playboy subscribers who happen to frequent my blog want to send me a photocopy?) Norm says it's sexist, Al says it's satire, Norm says it's a blemish on Al's character, Al says Norm is just trying to distract you from the failing economy, blah blah blah. Same old. But, the exchange of words did manage to remind me of a great piece Al wrote for Mother Jones a few years ago, possibly as he was beginning to mull the possibility of a Senate run:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/03/02_400.html

Nine Orders of Angels

Milton's Paradise Lost makes reference to a rigid hierarchy of angels in Heaven. As the footnotes hinted, Catholic theologians have specified that there are nine "Orders" of angels, ranked according proximity to the Supreme Being. St. Gregory the Great (alternately, Gregory I, pope from 590-604 A.D.) was the first to decree that there were nine; St. Thomas and St. Denis later ranked them as follows (listed from highest to lowest):

Seraphim
Cherubim
Thrones
Dominations
Virtues
Powers
Principalities
Archangels
Angels

In Paradise Lost, Milton uses this hierarchy to model the structure of Heaven after an army, and the kingdom of Heaven after an imperial power. Satan, an archangel, leads a band of upstarts and renegades in a revolt against God, loses the fight, and is subsequently banished to Pandemonium, the capitol of Hell. Among the "fallen angels" there with him are Beelzebub, Belial, Mammon, Mulciber, and Moloch. Satan, still discontent, learns about the creation of Adam and Eve in Eden and determines to continue his battle against God indirectly, by making his newly-created humans on Earth the battleground. In doing so, he finds himself in a battle of wits with some of the other angels of various rank, including Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Abdiel, Ithuriel, Uriel, and Zephron.

Paradise Lost is one of those books that will probably never stop serving as a source of analogies to the contemporary world. (Stanley Fish's last blog entry compares Obama's "passive campaigning" strategy against McCain to Jesus's method of responding to Satan's temptations in the sequel, Paradise Regained.) What I'm noticing on this read-through is how the two imperial powers, Heaven and Hell, wage their wars on smaller territories at the fringes of their respective domains, and how much this resembles the "Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union. The US and the USSR never came to blows directly, but the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all of the wars in Israel-Palestine during that period were direct consequences of American and Soviet economic and political engagement. Two Empires playing chess on a map of the world. The question is, of Heaven and Hell (as Milton presents them), which does the United States most resemble, and which the Soviet Union? Perhaps I will take up that question in a future blog entry, after I finish reading the book.

Women authors that come to mind immediately

Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelley, Edith Wharton, Maxine Hong Kingston, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Louise Erdrich, Flannery O'Connor.

"Medical School Burnout and the Challenge to Patient Care," from the New York Times

This one made me think about my friends in med school, and those planning to enter med school soon:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/health/chen10-30.html

Mennonite Life's swan song

From the final issue of Mennonite Life, "an illustrated, on-line quarterly, published by Bethel College, devoted to exploring and developing Mennonite experience":

We regret to announce that Mennonite Life will suspend publication as of this issue.

Over the decades of its existence, Mennonite Life has mostly focused on a particular niche for its readership. We have attempted to reach a literate, well-informed audience, but not a narrowly specialist one.

One of our major strengths since the beginning in 1946 has been in the use of visual materials. No other Mennonite publication has done this so extensively. In the web era, since 2000, we have also been able to add a good deal of audio excerpts. Related to this has been our ongoing focus on the arts.

We have intentionally covered a wide variety of topics across several disciplines. Thus one might call our approach "Mennonite studies."

During our paper publication era, 1946-1999, we were able in certain ways to measure our readership, simply by counting the number of subscribers, and by sending out occasional paper-based surveys to subscribers. In the web era, 2000-present, measuring is more difficult. We regularly send out an announcement of each issue to a list of around 275 email addresses. Some of those addresses are themselves lists, so that an unknown number of recipients (at least several hundred) are told of each issue when it becomes available.

One other way to measure our situation is in our contacts with writers and submissions. Here the situation is gloomy, and it was so already ten years ago, before the transition to the web format. We do not receive enough submissions for real viability for Mennonite Life.

Although we do have enthusiastic readers, and hear from them, it appears that our publishing niche is no longer viable in the Mennonite world. Mennonite publications have split into two segments—those intended for the broadest possible audience, and those consisting of academic specialists writing for other specialists. Readers and writers for a niche in between these don't seem to be a critical mass in the Mennonite world anymore.

Harper's Weekly Review

I recommend visiting Harper's Magazine's website (www.harpers.org) every Tuesday to read the latest edition of the Weekly Review column. In three short paragraphs they give a briefing on world news of the last week, and they manage to do so in a way that makes one realize what a strange world this is. I found when I was living overseas that I could go an entire week without reading a newspaper and then check the Harper's Weekly Review on Tuesday to feel more-or-less caught up.

I also thought this was a pretty powerful entry:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/10/hbc-90003746

"Invisible Man: How Ralph Ellison Explains Barack Obama," from the New Republic

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5c263e1d-d75d-4af9-a1d7-5cb761500092

What is a hedge fund?

From the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia:

"A highly speculative, largely unregulated investment device. Originating in the 1950s, the funds 'hedge' by offsetting 'short' positions (borrowing a security and then selling it at a higher price before repaying the lender) against 'long' positions (borrowing money to speculate on undervalued stocks; see hedging; speculation), but not all so-called hedge funds are actively involved in hedging. In general, hedge funds, besides being unregulated, are investment capital funds that are limited to wealthy investors and large institutions, that are structured as partnerships, and that use investment strategies involving higher risks in an attempt to produce greater financial gains. The fees associated with hedge funds are high, and can reduce the returns to levels in line with investments involving lower risks. Aggressive hedge funds work with highly leveraged securities, often purchased with less than 5% of actual investor capital, with banks covering the balance. Macro hedge funds speculate in currencies of various countries; financial analysts and government officials blamed such funds, including George Soros's Quantum fund, for disrupting the economies of Asian and Latin American countries in 1998. Other funds speculate in gold and other volatile commodities, or simultaneously buy and sell a stock or other financial instrument in two different markets to profit on the difference in value in the two markets (a technique called arbitrage). Funds are classified as U.S. or offshore; U.S. hedge funds are private investment partnerships that generally invest in traded securities. Offshore hedge funds (normally not open to U.S. investors) are mutual fund companies.

"Hedge funds came to public view in 1998 when Long-Term Capital Management (a U.S. fund) nearly collapsed, requiring a $3.5 billion bailout organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and paid by private banks. The bailout led to a number of U.S. and international investigations into hedge funds and calls for greater regulation and scrutiny. An attempt by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 to require hedge funds to register with it was overturned by the federal courts. In 2006 a another major U.S. hedge fund collapse, that of Amaranth Advisors, cost investors more than $6 billion. By 2007 the assets of such funds were estimated at more than $1 trillion; in February of that year the Bush administration and U.S. financial regulators rejected increasing the regulation of the funds and instead recommended that persons, institutions, and banks engage in sound practices before investing in or lending to a hedge fund."

"My Philosophy of Life," by John Ashbery

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15460

"Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes: A Midwestern Boyhood," by David Foster Wallace

http://www.harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1991-12-0000710.pdf

McCain and Obama Roast Each Other at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90KbbB9CvsE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhGBI2Y3HBQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5SWQJWm6Tg

H.R. 808, "Department of Peace and Nonviolence Act"

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h808ih.txt.pdf

"John P. Klassen and the Beginnings of the Art Legacy at Bluffton University," from Mennonite Life

http://www.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2008spring/klassen.php

"Rock, Paper, Scissors," from the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/13/081013fa_fact_lepore

"Farmer in Chief," from the New York Times Magazine

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html