Vince Carter Top 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85KlCeS9xwE

"Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"

It's satirical.
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/critstudies/transgress_v2_noafterword.pdf

Kobe's best dunks

http://www.nba.com/video/channels/top_plays/2009/09/14/nba_091409_kobe_dunks.nba/

"Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594744424/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp

Also on my list: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"

Mennonites in the NYTimes!?

Not what I expect to stumble upon in this week's Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13lives-t.html?ref=magazine

MJ Top 23

http://espn.go.com/nba/features/jordan23

Geo-engineering

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/climate-engineering

Miracle Fruit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sbGg31RJ3w&NR=1

Tecumseh

Amazing story:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/the_films/episode_2_trailer

Data Centers

We're probably far enough into the Information Revolution that it should be considered embarrassing that I still don't really know how the internet works. But, I'm learning:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html?ref=magazine

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-04-08-n39.html

Daggering

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/06/08/really-really-dirty-dancing-more-on-daggering.aspx

Einstein on Science and Religion

http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

Science and Religion

Stanley Fish hits the nail on the head with his newest post on the false dichotomy between science and religion. His essay is subtly tinged with the same snarky, self-righteous, combative mood that I experience when provoked by individuals who cannot accept that being scientific -- in the sense of setting all presuppositions aside, observing the world directly, and reporting those observations unencumbered by the limitations of cultural-historical bias, figurative language, or one's own unexamined pre-conceptions -- is either not entirely possible or is not necessarily the highest intellectual virtue.

I cannot fully explain why the issue has become inflammatory for me, since I rarely claim allegiance to any special religious tradition, outside of an ethnic and historical affiliation with a particular Protestant sect. I certainly have no desire to defend the logic of those who would claim that the earth is four-thousand-some years old based on numbers given in the Bible. Perhaps it is simply that the religion I grew up with had nothing to do with scouring the Bible for facts about the natural world or chronologies of ancient kings, and everything to do with imagining justice and participating in practices and dialogues that reflect love (a quality so important to that community that it is personified in language as divinity itself). For many of my peers, religion has served a wholly different, though no less worthy, purpose (for example, one friend conceives of religion as a way of rooting herself to the Earth and to those aspects of life that are cyclical rather than linear in nature; another friend's religion helps him to think through his own personal faults and shortcomings and to seek a sense of wholeness). The varieties of religious experience are many, and the simple-minded characterization of religion as a blissful fairy tale, or worse yet, as a smoke screen standing between a subject and reality, is simply a misreading. Religion is way more interesting than that.

It is equally plausible, I guess, that I am just being defensive. After all, the logic applied by those who would dismiss religion as a "fairy tale" or a "smoke screen" might also be used to suggest that the only old books worth reading are the ones that make truth claims, and not only that, but the ones whose truth claims are still considered true by today's truth-claiming elite. And that is a perspective that an aspiring student of philosophy and literature can hardly afford to accept.

This I will admit: There are plenty of smart ways to be an atheist. But denying religion its complexity by reducing it to a set of claims about history or the natural world is not one of them.

American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009

Here's the cap-and-trade bill as it stands now:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090515/hr2454.pdf

Markup of this bill by the House Energy and Commerce Committee begins next Monday. Chairman Waxman wants to have it completed by Memorial Day.

Things I find more interesting than work

Moby-Dick
Emerson
Westward expansion
History of science, technology
Influence of Europe upon American thought in the 19th century
Natural resources
Pragmatism
Romantic poetry
Shelley's "In Defense of Poetry"
Woolf
Dostoevsky
The Enlightenment
Exploration narratives
The Old Testament (esp. theories of authorship)
Theories of culture, multiculturalism, global community
Relationship of literature to literary theory
Argumentation

"Mississippi Drift: River Vagrants in the Age of Wal-Mart"

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/0081945

More Rorty

http://archives.acls.org/op/op10rorty.htm

Blake's "Laocoon"

http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=laocoon.b.illbk.01&java=yes

"End the University As We Know It"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html

"May It Please the Court"

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/may-it-please-the-court/?em

An article from 1999

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress-passes-wide-ranging-bill-easing-bank-laws.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1&emc=eta1

"March Madness"

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2009/03/march-madness.html

6OT

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=290710041

Organic

from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 11th Ed.:

organic adj 1 archaic : INSTRUMENTAL 2 a : of, relating to, or arising in a bodily organ b : affecting the structure of the organism 3 a (1) : of, relating to, or derived from living organisms <~ evolution> (2) : of, relating to, yielding, or involving the use of food produced with the use of feed or fertilizer of plant of animal origin without employment of chemically formulated fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides <~ farming> <~ produce> b (1) : of, relating to, or containing carbon compounds (2) : relating to, being, or dealt with by a branch of chemistry concerned with the carbon compounds of living beings and most other carbon compounds 4 a : forming an integral element of a whole : FUNDAMENTAL b : having systematic coordination of parts : ORGANIZED c : having the characteristics of an organism : developing in the manner of a living plant or animal 5 : of, relating to, or constituting the law by which a government or organization exists

from Dictionary.com:

organic adj :

1 noting or pertaining to a class of chemical compounds that formerly comprised only those existing in or derived from plants or animals, but that now includes all other compounds of carbon.

2 characteristic of, pertaining to, or derived from living organisms: organic remains found in rocks.

3 of or pertaining to an organ or the organs of an animal, plant, or fungus.

4 of, pertaining to, or affecting living tissue: organic pathology.

5 Psychology. caused by neurochemical, neuroendocrinologic, structural, or other physical impairment or change: organic disorder. Compare FUNCTIONAL.

6 Philosophy. having an organization similar in its complexity to that of living things.

7 characterized by the systematic arrangement of parts; organized; systematic: elements fitting together into a unified, organic whole.

8 of or pertaining to the basic constitution or structure of a thing; constitutional; structural: The flaws in your writing are too organic to be easily remedied.

9 developing in a manner analogous to the natural growth and evolution characteristic of living organisms; arising as a natural outgrowth.

10 viewing or explaining something as having a growth and development analogous to that of living organisms: an organic theory of history.

11 pertaining to, involving, or grown with fertilizers or pesticides of animal or vegetable origin, as distinguished from manufactured chemicals: organic farming; organic fruits.

12 Law. of or pertaining to the constitutional or essential law or laws of organizing the government of a state.

13 Architecture. noting or pertaining to any work of architecture regarded as analogous to plant or animal forms in having a structure and a plan that fulfill perfectly the functional requirements for the building and that form in themselves an intellectually lucid, integrated whole.

14 Fine Arts. of or pertaining to the shapes or forms in a work of art that are of irregular contour and seem to resemble or suggest forms found in nature.

from Thesaurus.com:

organic adj : amoebic, anatomical, animate, basal, biological, biotic, cellular, constitutional, elemental, essential, fundamental, inherent, innate, integral, live, living, necessary, nuclear, original, plasmic, primary, prime, primitive, principal, structural, unadulterated, vital

Terms of the Day

New Democrat
bromance
post-post-feminism

Correlation v. Causation

National Review's "Best Conservative Movies"

http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YWQ4MDlhMWRkZDQ5YmViMDM1Yzc0MTE3ZTllY2E3MGM=

Forrest Gump: "... an amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 60s."

Groundhog Day: "Murray begins the film as an irony-soaked narcissist, contemptuous of beauty, art, and commitment. His journey of self-discovery leads him to understand that the fads of modernity are no substitute for the permanent things."

Juno: "The film has its faults, including a number of crass moments and a pregnant high school student with an unrealistic level of self-confidence. Yet it also exposes a broken culture in which teen sex is dehumanizing, girls struggle with "choice," and boys aimlessly try--and sometimes downright fail--to become men."

Ghostbusters: "You have to like a movie in which the bad guy is a regulation-happy buffoon from the EPA, and the solution to a public menace comes from the private sector."

The Dark Knight: "In his fight against the terrorist Joker, Batman has to devise a new means of surveillance, push the limits of the law, and accept the hatred of the press and public."

Making Sense

Telling a story is a way of structuring existence, creating order out of, not chaos, but the absence of order. Thinking about storytelling in this way requires that one momentarily accept the notion that the very idea of a unified narrative, a collection of incidents and emotions translated into sentences and paragraphs that are meaningfully interrelated (rather than haphazardly clustered together) and have a beginning and an ending, is not something that can be discovered, but something that must be, through an extraordinary process of mediation between one's mind and one's society, formed. It is difficult to tell a story that coheres internally, but in order to "make sense" this is what one must do. Yet the catch-22 here is that a coherent story requires one to make use of omission and to create bridges out of words, craftily so, to make what was omitted seem not as critical as what was told. These omissions account for, in some part, why it can never be satisfactorily said what it means to be human. That question is certainly the central force driving the human artistic impulse, and if it is ever universally resolved that the story of what it means to be human has been coherently stated without omissions, the artistic impulse will expire.

"It was March and the wind was blowing"

This passage from Virginia Woolf's The Years (1937) reminds me of today:

It was March and the wind was blowing. But it was not "blowing." It was scraping, scourging. It was so cruel. So unbecoming. Not merely did it bleach faces and raise red spots on noses; it tweaked up skirts; showed stout legs; made trousers reveal skeleton shins. There was no roundness, no fruit in it. Rather it was like the curve of a scythe which cuts, not corn, usefully; but destroys, revelling in sheer sterility. With one blast it blew out colour--even a Rembrandt in the National Gallery, even a solid ruby in a Bond Street window: one blast and they were gone. Had it any breeding place it was in the Isle of Dogs among tin cans lying beside a workhouse drab on the banks of a polluted city. It tossed up rotten leaves, gave them another span of degraded existence; scorned, derided them, yet had nothing to put in the place of the scorned, the derided. Down they fell. Uncreative, unproductive, yelling its joy in destruction, its power to peel off the bark, the bloom, and show the bare bone, it paled every window; drove old gentlemen further and further into the leather smelling recesses of clubs; and old ladies to sit eyeless, leather cheeked, joyless among the tassels and antimacassars* of their bedrooms and kitchens. Triumphing in its wantonness it emptied the streets; swept flesh before it; and coming smack against a dust cart standing outside the Army and Navy Stores, scattered along the pavement a litter of old envelopes; twists of hair; papers already blood smeared, yellow smeared, smudged with print and sent them scudding to plaster legs, lamp posts, pillar boxes, and fold themselves frantically against area railings.

*small coverings, usually ornamental, placed on the backs and arms of upholstered furniture to prevent wear or soiling; tidies.

"Philosophy as a Kind of Writing"

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v039/39.1.rorty01.html

"Who's Deceiving the Liberals?"

I saw somebody reading this on the Metro today:

http://www.whosdeceivingtheliberals.com/Downloads/WhosDeceivingTheLiberals.pdf

Maps of War

http://www.mapsofwar.com/

Three Posts on One Sentence

I just loved these last few posts from Wyatt Mason, in which he holds a single sentence from Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherland up to the light. As a reader I sometimes get a little too sidetracked by theoretical matters, and it's nice to read things like this that bring the words on the page back into focus:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004368

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004382

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004400

String Theory

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/

GOELRO Plan

The first economic recovery plan of the Soviet Union: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOELRO_plan

Said Lenin: "...the organization of industry on the basis of modern, advanced technology, on electrification which will provide a link between town and country, will put an end to the division between town and country, will make it possible to raise the level of culture in the countryside and to overcome, even in the most remote corners of the land, backwardness, ignorance, poverty, disease, and barbarism."

Doesn't the economic recovery plan brewing in Congress right now contain some muted echo of this spirit? The bills in the House and the Senate have been pitched by some, mostly on the Democratic side of the aisle, as an opportunity to create a new energy system by mobilizing "modern, advanced technology," theoretically also restoring some economic vitality to rural areas and building a power grid to transport that energy to cities ("a link between town and country"). The House bill, at least, also contained huge sums of money for education ("ignorance") health care ("disease"), and low-income tax credit expansions ("poverty"), as well as some funds for extending the reach of the internet to "the most remote corners of the land" ("to raise the level of culture in the countryside").

I'm not making a judgment about either the USSR's plan or the US's. Just noting a language similarity.

Types of Wetlands

Marshes - Wetlands dominated by soft-stemmed vegetation.

Swamps - Wetlands dominated by mostly woody plants.

Bogs - Freshwater wetlands, often formed in old glacial lakes, characterized by spongy peat deposits, evergreen trees and shrubs, and a floor covered by a thick carpet of sphagnum moss.

Fens - Freshwater peat-forming wetlands covered mostly by grasses, sedges, reeds, and wildflowers.

Blackwater USA

http://www.blackwaterusa.com/index.html

"NFL Orders Retreat from War Metaphors"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/31/AR2009013100163.html

How Other Countries Fixed Their Health Care Systems

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/26/090126fa_fact_gawande

Bush Photo Gallery

http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall/?hp

"Directive"

"Directive," by Robert Frost

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry -
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.
First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Apostel on Worldview

According to the Belgian philosopher Leo Apostel, a "worldview" comprises seven elements:

1. An ontology, or a descriptive model of the world.
2. An explanation of the world.
3. A futurology, answering the question, "Where are we heading?"
4. Values, or answers to ethical questions: "What should we do?"
5. A praxeology, methodology, or theory of action: "How should we attain our goals?"
6. An epistemology, or theory of knowledge.
7. An etiology, or an account of its own origins and construction.

Apostel's definition isn't broad enough. Here are a couple additions:

8. A subjectivity, or a sense of self. Includes things like identity descriptors (e.g., extroverted, Indonesian, Christian) and personal preferences (e.g. favorite food, cutest animal).
9. A taxonomy, or classification system, for the social and natural world. Is this the same as #2?

Emotions and memories should also be included somewhere, but I can't decide whether to put them in their own category or include them in #8.

"Dear Sir Obama"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/opinion/16lettersintro.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=letters%20to%20obama&st=cse

Worldview, Ideology, or Culture?

It bothers me when the words worldview, culture, and ideology are used interchangeably. Someone should really spend some time thinking this through and coming up with semi-concise definitions of those words that make the distinctions between them clear.

DeLaneau

http://www.delaneauwatch.com/

"My Genome, My Self"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11Genome-t.html

"This Living Hand"

"This Living Hand," by John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed - see here it is -
I hold it towards you.

Expansiveness, continued

A friend suggested to me that there might be a possible contradiction between Expansiveness and being outright critical of wrong-headed ideas. Understanding and open-mindedness can only go so far, he argues, before one must take a stand against the propagation of nonsense. (For example, those who believe that global warming is a hoax are just ignorant, and their views are not worthy of respect.)

I don't see a contradiction. Expansiveness has very little to do with empathy; wrong ideas are not deserving of empathy, and people who consider Expansiveness a virtue have no obligation to blunt their criticism of wrong ideas under the banner of "open-mindedness." Expansive people are generally well-read, well-researched, relatively unbiased, and familiar with the competing arguments, and therefore they are in prime position to let the Know-Nothings have it. The more knowledgeable they are, the less mercy they should show.

The thing that distinguishes expansive people from other knowledgeable people is that they conceive of their minds as works-in-progress, even on topics where they can claim expertise. A few implications follow: First, they are aware of the limitations of their own knowledge, and are actively seeking to overcome those limitations. (Which reminds me of the first rule of book discussion groups: "If you haven't read the book, shut the hell up.") Second, they are conscious of the fact that "knowledge" is a socially-produced phenomenon, and as such, oftentimes what seems like knowledge is actually a case of groupthink. Expansive people do what they can to maintain independence, or at very least, to be honest about the ways in which they are influenced by the crowd. Finally, they relish the opportunity to learn something about a field of knowledge that was previously a mystery, whether it be the inner workings of a lawnmower, an old book, or the history of soap.

Crab Dribble

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3814635

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpQBD672HkQ

Blogging

Most often, I use this blog as a filing cabinet. It is just a place to store quotes, facts, articles, and links that I find interesting, so that I can refer to them in the future. My job keeps me around the computer most of the time, so I have ample opportunity to stumble upon interesting information and move it over to D'Eleaneaux. I've been very happy with this function of the blog.

More recently, I've started using the blog to express more of my own thoughts, generally about once or twice a week. I never intend to write full, five-paragraph essays, but sometimes that is what those posts turn into. In these cases, D'Eleaneaux transcends its original purpose as a filing cabinet and becomes a workshop. An ideas workshop.

You know those moments when things seem to come together and you understand something you didn't understand previously? Usually for me they are such minor revelations that they are not even worth sharing with anybody. Sometimes it is even embarrassing that I needed a revelation to figure those things out. (For example, I had this revelation over Christmas break: You can be funny really easily just by drawing on a humorous catchphrase or a theme from earlier in the conversation. That will help me so much in the future!) I think about D'Eleaneaux as an opportunity to latch onto a revelation every now and then, and to put words to it before I forget about the revelation or before I become convinced that it was a flawed revelation. When they go on the blog, they are in a fledgling state and have barely begun to be analyzed. Some of them look better to me as time passes, and others look worse. But I don't really see a need to go through and weed out the ones that no longer please me. Seems to me there's something Whitman-like about standing up for one's own contradictions.

I recently rediscovered this Helene Cixous quotation that might serve as a fitting theme for my blog: "If she is a whole, it's a whole composed of parts that are wholes, not simple partial objects but a moving, limitlessly changing ensemble."